Shadow of the Dreadnaught
by Glacier-Paws
Summary: Three years after the events of the 'Star Wolf Returns' ending, team Star Fox has recollected itself. Concealing themselves from outside the Lylat system, they went through a deep recession, when a picture of a letter lures them back into the outside world, hopefully even into a new time to shine brighter than ever before.
1. An old-fashioned letter

Three years have passed, since Star Wolf had taken the credit for preventing the Anglar Blitz's success. Slippy and Amanda had married shortly afterwards, and tried to find something fitting for both of them, with little success. After a year of insecurity, Fox offered to Slippy to partake in Star Fox again, this time along with Amanda. The first two years after the Anglar Blitz were surprisingly successful, even with the stronger competition, in some cases even because of it. They were to encounter Star Wolf several times in work. The first time being just four months after the Blitz. But by then, Krystal had already left Star Wolf to be gone and not be seen again.

Hearing that the Toads had even abandoned what ever they were doing to join the old team was the final straw that had Peppy Hare decide to return, too. Fox was thankful for the opportunity to welcome his former mentor in the team once again. He kept asking Peppy, why he would give up on being the Head of a national fleet and army, just to work for some independant mercenary company. He only recieved vague answers though. Things like "it is extremely stressful and tiresome after a while".

Even for a year after growing to five members, they got a lot of work. Fortune shouldn't be in their favor forever, though. Although, that was the wrong way to put it, Fox's desperate trys to forget the past were what should stand in their way. They had long before extended their field of work to far beyond the Lylat system, where they were one of many units to track down a highly rewarded criminal. During the hunt, he met someone, who, after finishing the job, would stay in his mind for ages.

Well, it was rather the image of her, that made him suffer. Since then, he started limiting the work of his team to the Lylat system, staying away from the outer systems all together. And by limiting potential job offers to one system, the success instantly halted. They only got small jobs, barely to live from and maintain their equipment. And in the end, they even had to bear two months, without anything at all.

* * *

Even with it's second orbital station circling around it now, the shades of blue and green still made Corneria a magnificent sight. Would flying down there get them anywhere, Fox asked himself, while looking out of the window, staring at the startling sphere below. They had spent two months without an assignment now. Not even a small one. No transportation, no escortation, nothing. They were running out of supplies again.

The bridge's control panels were unused momentarily, ROB was making routine checks to keep all old electronics alive as long as possible. There was no risk of any failing yet, but in the future, that might start happening. The back hatch opened, and the old rabbit returned from his visit to the surface. "You still worrying about our financial situation? Did you even move since I left?" He tapped at Fox' back to get his attention, as Fox initially ignored his old mentor's entry and kept staring at Corneria. "Come on, what's with the constant depression? We'll solve this somehow. Something's surely gonna come up."

Fox turned around: "How are you sure to believe this? Why aren't you even mad at me? How is this better than being a General?"

Peppy took a few steps towards the worried man, who still seemed like a clueless cub to him. "Believe me, even this is a lot more relaxing than any second in the life of a General. Supplies seem infinite in the army, but they're not, and you're constantly forced to do things you would rather not." He took one last step and patted Fox' shoulder. "Things will turn out for the better eventually. Now come on, we need to get your mind off this for a while, to think more clearly. Let's go and have a drink or two."

They were about to leave the bridge, as a sound signaled an incoming message which flashed up on the screen. "What's that?" Fox turned around and pointed at the message, while Peppy put on his glasses to read it. Well he was trying to read it, but it wasn't even a text message, only a picture of a badly written note on a piece of paper on some wooden surface, most likely a table.

It read... "132 Gambling Ave, Corneria City...is this an address?" Fox was perplexed, as he was everything but used to this kind of contact. Peppy, in thought, mumbled something about it being a request for them to come and went to the display to check for the sender. It was "Annie Randonam, do you know that person?"

Fox gave Peppy a questioning look, only to see him tilting his eyes, sighing and covering his face with his hand. He opened an own pad and typed "Annie Randonam" and below "Any Random Name", which made Fox lift his head in understanding. In any case, the message left some questions open, even to Peppy. Could it be a trap? But by whom then? No, that was impossible. There was no reason someone would want to set up a trap or harm them in any other way at that very moment.

But before any thing else was said, a second picture flashed up, this time the note reading  
"Now, please. And I really mean now in terms of 'now' now. Just say it's you, when you're there."

"Well, it sounds more like a distress call than a request now. You wanted something different to happen and here you are. Fox gave Peppy a questioning look. "What do you suggest?"

"We'll have to check it out." They started leaving the bridge and moving through the narrow corridors of the Great Fox II. "Question is, if you go alone, or you should have the rest come along?

"Don Carle had enough time to set something up to take revenge, two months is a too long wait for him. I have my doubts that this is anything set up. But you shouldn't go all on your own either way."

They started heading for the quarters. While walking, Peppy kept giving advice. "Taking everyone with you would be counterproductive on the other hand. It attracts unnecessarily much attention if the five of us all walk along. Also, if it would turn out to be a set-up, we couldn't do anything to help you, if we get caught, too. I suggest we all stay nearby, but you're the one to actually go to the exact place, together with Falco at best. In an actual sudden fight, Me and the Toads would only drag you down."

The Toads tended to be slightly tiring. When on a mission, if they weren't busy with something, someone always had to distract them, things got weird. Not the open-couple kind of weird, but nevertheless confusing. "Peppy, are you sure about this? You would be spending a lot of time with them doing nothing, and you know they can be quite a handful."

Peppy waved Fox' worries aside. "Don't worry about me, the two of them aren't exactly all too demanding. I'll keep them focused ...for a while that is.", the old hare stated with a short laugh at the end.

Peppy's quick assessments never ceased to amaze Fox. How much he even thought about it, he didn't see it differently in any way, so he just turned on his comms, announced that they were to leave for the surface, and out of the shifting door right next to the two surprised mammals two frogs instantly showed up, like out of nowhere.

"You didn't need the comms for these two yards.", an excited pink frog blurted out while turning up.

"No, but I need Falco to hear it too, wherever he might be right now..." With a demanding tone Amanda asked what it was all about, but got just asked to wait until Falco was there. A few seconds of waiting later, Fox decided to walk up to Falco's quarter and just open the door. As always recently, he sat on a chair, headphones covering his ears, most likely the usual random jinglings of electric guitars and synthesizers, studying one of his aeronautics-books and banging his head to the music.

This was something he just couldn't resist doing this to his colleague, every time he caught him with his music running and lost in some game or book. The moment, when Falco had his back turned to the door and was absolutely unaware of what ever might happen behind him, only occurred, when he was absolutely relaxed. Fox shushed the rest, and sneaked up to Falco, only to have him intuitively switch, pull out his blaster and aim it at his potential attacker. He swiftly turned around with a mix between shock and terror on his face but without moving the blaster, and sighed, taking off his headphones and relaxing again.

"Woah, Fox, you almost got me scared there." He simply folded his arms, tilted his head and smirked. This was so much fun, he was pretty sure to never get bored of that.

"Yeah, sure, almost.." He couldn't refrain from uttering a quiet chuckle.

"Ok what is it then? Something important?"He knew, that Falco was sure to be annoyed about that for quite a while again.  
"Let's go the hangar. We're travelling with the old bridge. I'll be telling you guys what's going on while were on the way." The old bridge was the old Great Fox' disconnectable bridge that was left after the Aparoid Invasion had been thwarted. It was the last remnant of their old ship. The rest were some plans in some company's building, would something come up and they'd need it, they had the name and the address lying around somewhere.

They went through the small hangar, past the Arwings to the edge they store the transporter in. Peppy sat down in front of the terminals, booting up the transporter and stearing it aside to the separable compartment. He next asked ROB to open the outer gate. All the others had to patiently wait for everything, as the transporter slowly lifted up and moved towards the aerial shield. After they had passed it, ROB closed the gate again and they turned around and downwards, heading for the very capital they had saved from utter destruction two times already, three if you count getting Wolf the neutralizing device.

They were eager to see, if this time, it would hold an actual catch-free job. Recently, they hadn't been very lucky. The last one got them involved with a small functional in the organized crime scene. They got away and visited Corneria several times back then, but nothing special happened. They only got chances to little by little use up what was left of their financial puffer. They needed at least a small boost pretty badly, if they wanted to get by for the next month.

"So what's this whole thing about now?", Falco blurted out. The Toads agreed on wanting to know.

"We recieved something we'd guess is supposed to be some sort of distress signal. There were just two pictures sent, giving us an address. It's 132 Gambling Ave in Corneria City. And the other one seemed to be stating that it was important. Both were just pictures of a note written in very bad handwriting. Whoever is contacting us, knows, who we are and seems to want me or us to come most likely to talk about something. I'm hoping it's a briefing on some work for us, but as we have no identity of any contact person, it might as well be a setup. But even if so, we'll check anyway."

Falco very well knew that it was also entering the atmosphere that made him slightly nervous every time, when seeing it from so close by. Usually, he was locked up in his quarter or hanging around somewhere else. Any place without a window, that is. It was also always then, when he'd make mistakes, like forgetting to check on certain systems, when entering it in an Arwing. But this time, he was sure, it seemed a bit weird. "Written on pictures...does that mean he or she doesn't want to be found by the local security?"

Peppy engaged in his thoughts. "Well it's either that, or that person doesn't want to be found by someone else."

"Either way, I'm checking out the maps to find this, I want this thing scanned by the bridge before we enter it. I want to know if we're to deal with Mechs or any of the like, before we go in, not afterwards.", announcing this, Falco sat down on the other chair, moved it to the terminals next to Peppy, and opened the dynamic map of the city. He typed in the adress and set it as a destination, making a Nav point show up on the front screen Peppy was using. His own terminal showed a site of the place. "Kitty Cat Parlour" was the name, and it seemed to be some sort of club.

"This sure sounds dangerous. It could be anything". The older members were glad, that even Slippy had gotten the gist of this quickly.

"If this anonymous person is hiding, how are we supposed to find him or her? He's surely not just gonna show up all the time calling out 'Hey! I'm the secret guy, please only talk to me if you're Star Fox.'"

Fox could tell he had to speak up to keep his team focused. "Amanda, don't worry about that part, we're assured to find a way to whatever we're supposed to find." Turning from one worried Toad to the other, he put on an alarmingly serious face. "Slippy, bear with me here. We're mercenaries, right?"

The startled frog nodded. "Right."

"If dangerous business isnt the business of mercenaries, then what is? I know it reeks of something shady, but it also reeks of work, and our need for work just has the latter have the higher weight." From the looks of his face and his head avoiding eye contact, Slippy was sure to be becoming aware and embarrassed about his lack of understanding. Instead, he started looking out of the front window, at the green and uneven landscapes they were passing by.


	2. To insult without talking

By the time they found a close harbor to land in, a very small and barely guarded one unfortunately, Falco had even insist on running a scan on the building. Unfortunately, that was one of the things, the bridge couldn't do without some sensors from the actual Great Fox. He didn't know what it was, maybe it was just intuition, but this whole damn thing just didn't give him a good feeling about it.

The team gathered around Fox for a last short briefing. "Okay, we're close enough here. Slippy. I want you to stay here with Peppy and Amanda, but keep your comms on and stay alert. Falco, you and I go check out what this is about. But if anything funny happens and we get separated, contact the others immediately. I'll do so myself if it happens. We've gotta do something about that belt though. "

He folded his arms, tilting his head to the left and looking at Falco's belt, to which he had strapped several grenades and apart from his blaster an automatic minigun. Someone ought to see that and report it aloud. Fox was hoping to come to talk, not to make a mess with their sheer appearance. A blaster was normal these days, especially in this district of the city, but all this? "Geez.".

"I'm so not putting down my stuff. I want to blast away any face that seems hostile, otherwise I'm not going with you." What he said, along with the rejective gesture made it very clear to Fox, that he wouldn't be changing his mind so quickly. He had to keep that in mind. Falco even thinking about chickening out, let alone speaking of it, was anything but common. And also, he usually agreed to keep the weaponry at a normal level around civillians, but this time he insisted on keeping it. Something seemed to be bothering him. Although right then, he had no choice but to accept Falco's wish and find another way not to rouse unwanted attention.  
He turned to Peppy, pointing at his open jacket. "Can you spare that jacket? That might serve the purpose."

"Sure thing, Fox." He took it off, took two small glasses of medicine out and handed it to him. "You'll want to stick to what's important. Don't spend unnecessarily much time in there. And if you have to, inform us beforehand. I don't want to spend forever hanging about ."  
Fox nodded while turning to Falco. He asked, how putting on that jacket was to hide his weaponry, but Fox asked him to do it in a way he described to him afterwards. Falco was outraged first, but admitted it was the only compromise apparent at the time.

With this, the Star Fox team had split up, with Fox and Falco heading straight for the Kitty Cat Parlour. Gambling Ave was just one block away from the harbor, so they found it pretty quickly. As they had expected from the district they were in, it wasn't exactly the epitomy of "desirable". Poor people sitting around in dark backyards, packs of very scantily clad women here and there, often near entrances with very, very suggesting names and signs above them. While walking along it, there was a beggar with other similarly looking people on his coat-tails, asking for something to eat. A very annoying distraction for Fox' avian friend, especially as Fox even fell for it and paid for a meal for them. He even was about to grip Fox' arm and tell him to stop it, but he knew him much too well. He knew there was no helping it for that soft-hearted dog. When they entered the avenue, they started at something over 250. The way back to number 132 was a bit longer than they had in mind, but they both didn't feel so bad about that, as it didn't look as awful after they passed a few blocks.

Actually, crossing after crossing, the establishments looked more and more prestigous, well on that level, one would call it "tolerable". If it weren't for the packs of females whose numbers didn't shrink as fast as the rest of the signs of poverty, it would have looked like any ordinary street in the city. Eventually, they finally arrived at the place, they were looking for. It was a large building, seemingly not with more than 2 upper floors though, and a large tiger guarding the narrow entrance door. You could even see the switching light colours illuminating the club from inside. All the space on the front size was being used up by the sign portraying the name of it. "Kitty Cat Parlour" Cat in pink and the rest in blue. The bouncer was armed with some handgun, both couldn't tell what kind of though.  
He was already extending his arm when he saw Fox and Falco approach him. "No guests at daytime without reservations or invitations."

Falco was expecting a little more respect towards an ace pilot like him. "Listen up, I'm pretty sure we are invited. Back off."  
His rude entry didn't seem to impress the big guy at all. He continued, while taking up a pad from his table. "Sorry, no exceptions. If you aren't on the list, I can't allow you to enter. Who are you guys?"

Fox couldn't resist taking that one. He always put on his proud voice when answering to that kind of question and would repeat the same words every time. "We're Star Fox"  
Either he wasn't very bright, or he was spending his life on the other end of the galaxy. In any case, he didn't jump while hearing his name. He just did something on his pad, then looked up and down between his pad and the obvious invitees' faces. "Ah, so you're these. Yes, you're invited. I'm sorry, I got confused, because there were five pictures on your invitation. You can enter of course.", he said with a suddenly kind voice, while taking a step back. He typed something and then repeated that they were free to move in, while the two curious visitors were already entering. Apparently, there was some sort of secondary security measure.

It was very loud inside. Lights in all colours moved all over the place. Guests of all kinds sat at and sometimes on the counters, drinking, laughing and talking about random stuff. In terms of species but also in terms of clothing or armor, there was absolutely everything. Leaving canines at a very low percentage for the whole thing being on Corneria, while all of the personnel, the ones on the stages, along with the ones serving drinks, were only different types of cats. All doors and corridors leading from the main hall were guarded by identically clad tigers as the one at the door. Two of them at every one.

They both observed their surroundings first. They knew what kind of place this was. And the face Falco put on made it very clear that he was anything but pleased about it. In times of depression, especially in the recent years, Fox had spent a few hours at such a place from time to time, but even he didn't feel very comfortable in this moment. They went to the one counter that wasn't stuffed with groups of people and took two seats, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone on their way. They sat on two stools and tried to talk to the keeper. It proved harder than expected, as even here, there was a group of rabbits, reconstructing an event where the same people were spending their time in a similarly unconstructive way.  
After a while, a fat Lynx in a black maiden dress came along, moving her head between the new guests and shouting into their ears: "Hey there, sweeties, can I get you something?"

Fox moved back for a bit and then started talking. "...", was what the barmaid heard. Suddenly, his friend started attracting her attention, making weird hand movements around his face. But even more confusing was that the barmaid seemed to see something in this which absolutely infuriated her. Although instead of screaming or resorting to violence , she started doing the same. They both kept doing this for something that felt like ten minutes, until she pointed at some exit, made a few more movements involving showing the back of her hand and stretching out one particular finger. And Falco shouted into Fox's ear, telling him to come along, as he left for that exit.

Later on, Falco was to explain to Fox what was happening and what CSL was. But what they were saying wasn't exactly pleasant enough to reconstruct it word by word.

He followed his unexpectedly talented friend into the corner the barmaid had pointed at, left the main hall and turned to the left into a much less noisy corridor. "That woman had nerves. If there wasn't security all over the place, I swear I would have..."  
"Calm down, calm down. What was going on anyway?"  
"I'll explain later, right now we need to trust her directions." But he didn't calm down for long. "But I swear to you, if that meatball of a ..."  
"Falco! Focus! Focus on where to go. What ever it is, just cut it out." He realized by then, that they were obviously communicating somehow, and likely in a very rude manner on both sides, as Falco had gotten so worked up, he was already ruffling up his feathers.

"All right, you're right, I got it. It just doesn't sound like anything real. More like a path to nirvana." And the way they were going gradually gave Fox the exact same feeling. It seemed like they were alking along the entire bulding's lenth, only to turn to the right twice and walking down the same stretch right again. At the very end, Falco opened an unlocked door, that led into a cold concrete staircase. They descended two floors, only to enter another long tunnel, barely lit up by some lamps.

In the distance, they saw two last guards, standing firm and observant, as if they were expecting someone. They expectedly stopped the two supposedly invited guests and asked for some valid ID. Falco was already asking what the paranoia was about, but Fox just went ahead and handed out his ID card. They held it in front of a scanning device attached to a terminal on the wall, read something that appeared on the screen, and seemed content with that. They handed it back and even welcomed them, while opening the double door.

But behind it, there was another door, with a terminal on the right. On the screen, they saw a sound visualization and heard a voice. "So you two are...eh..."  
"I'm just gonna say it's us." He didn't know if it was what was expected, but he was just guessing from the message that was sent to the Great Fox II.

"Ah perfect, and you look like it, too." With this, they heard several locking mechanisms open and a thick steel door slowly opened to reveal a small well-lit room with several tables, electronic devices and paper lying on most of them. They entered, only to hear an ear-smashing bang behind them, as the door closed and locked again. If there were more people in this room, they would have already drawn out their weapons. In the middle, there was someone sitting on a large table, that was obviously a screen-based terminal at the same time. He got up and moved around the table to walk up to them with open arms.

"Welcome to my fine little hideout, so I finally get to meet the famous Star Fox te...eh...where's the rest?"  
It was a slightly overweight, snow-white cat wearing a grey suit. He looked past Fox and Falco, hoping to find the rest behind them.  
"They're watching out for our transporter. The place you have this club of yours doesn't look very safe.", Falco replied.  
The foreign sounding young man went up to Falco and shook his hand. "Yes that's pretty much more than certainly the case. It's more than a pleasure to meet you two." He also extended his arm towards Fox, although not moving towards him. After shaking hands, he took out a handkerchief and cleaned his hands. My name is Glacier and I requested you to help on behalf on my company."

Falco could only let out a demonstrative "hmph", and started overdoing it again, right away. "What kind of help would this rotten place need from us...or deserve it?"  
The cat turned to him, having observed Fox from a safe distance before. "Ehm, my company doesn't exactly run this club...thing, it's in a completely different buisness. I only use this as a safe place to hide. Mostly from monkeys right now."  
"Then what is it about?"

"Heavy industry, science, real estates...expanding to pretty much everything right now. I don't like this social...evening...drinking thing at all actually. But I have people here who did a very reliable job up until now and..."  
The way he talked brought back some bad feelings in Fox, silencing him up until then, but at this rate, they weren't going to do anything in the next few hours, he had to speed it up. "Let's cut to the chase right now, I understood you needed help immediately."

"Yes, you're right, completely forgot that." He turned around, walking from table to table, gathering several bags and filling them with stuff he was picking up from everywhere. "You said you have a transporter, right? S'that mean I can just come along with you?"  
"Listen smart-tail, we didn't agree on anything yet. Can you at least tell us what you need us for?" Falco was already moving his hand toward his belt, but got stopped by Fox before he could do something.

"Ok, ok, I'll explain in details later and give you a short summary." He hurried to his seat and started opening various pictures on his table and pushing one of them after the other to the two who were to work for him hopefully. He started talking very quickly. He had prepared to explain, but misjudged how long it would take for them to arrive.

"Planet Jorania, a planet with a varied climate, much like Corneria, practically not touched by technology and it's impacts. Formerly an agricultural Venomian colony, it's inhabitants, large light-till-dark-brownish hebavorous people with horns..." , he passed a picture of an anthropomorphic cow and a bull, standing arm in arm, likely to be a couple or a married couple. "...were used as farmers, yet only being allowed to keep 20% of their crops for themselves. Due to it's former use, the ground below is still full of rare ores, patiently waiting to be gathered for people who can trade it for technology with them."

He passed another picture of a large harvesting machine with himself standing in front of it giving a thumbs up with an open smile, while two bulls hug the machine in the background. "Unfortunately, the new-founded Venomian Empire has returned to seize Jorania for themselves again, but are bound by contracts that prevent them from just attacking it, yet they did break one rule by shooting at me and forcing me to flee and leave the expedition fleet wait for it's destruction by an army of very impatient monkeys." He passed one last picture to them, depicting a baboon in a red military uniform fiercely looking at the viewer and clenching his fist.

"Phew..." After finishing rattling off this whole thing, he sighed and rested for a few seconds. "And that's pretty much why I need your help. You will be payed a base fee for escorting and a bonus per battle, when needed. So, what do you think?"


	3. Unsure decisions

This was a lot at once. Falco turned around, pulled his colleague over and put their heads together to have them not be overheard by that , he had very good ears and there was little to no space to move further away.

He really didn't want Fox to take the shady cat along. He really didn't. "We're not doing this are we? Tell me we're not doing this."

"I'm sorry, but I'm really considering it. We haven't had any work for a while. And it sounds like honest work..."

"Honest work? This reeks so fishy and you're really falling for that? What about Dash? You really believe that creepy guy's word over there over that of the one of all Monkeys who always cheered at what we do? At the hones..."

"It's not as easy as that. I'm sure he can't just cleanly expand on Venom as quickly as he is."

"So you admit even you're getting the feeling something isn't quite..."

"Either way it's money."

"Yeah, but remember it's a job from a private company, they need to keep an eye on the profit. They don't pay as well as armies do. What if something else comes up? What happened to 'were staying in Lylat from here on in' "

"It's been two months without the smallest thing coming up. And our recent work wasn't that clean either, was it?"  
"At least it was more than babysitting some guy while carrying him around."

" I tell you what: He mentioned it's in the outer systems. We can do what we want there. If he is getting his hands dirty, nothing prevents us from stopping him. Worst thing that can happen if we do is only him not hiring us for anything any more, and I take it you would be ok with that anyhow. That a deal?"

Falco sighed. "I don't like this, but okay, that's a deal." He wouldn't forget about that sudden change of heart though.

They moved apart again, facing a slightly distracted Glacier. Falco looked over to Fox, but he didn't seem to want to talk to Glacier unless it was necessary. Incomprehensibly, he didn't dislike Glacier. But hearing him talk brought back painful memories. And Falco could too well understand that.  
Glacier was just transferring some information from his table to a few terminal devices, before seeing his invitees had made up their minds. The moment of truth had come and he was ashamed he wasn't better prepared for it.

"We're doing it."

He only clapped his hands and commented their approval with a "Wonderful, I'll just get the rest of my important stuff together." He went through the small corridor at the back side and came back with one last small bag in his hands. But if he'd been around with people he was more comfortable with at that moment, his reaction would have contained more movement, more jumps and more "Yay"s. So everything wasn't lost after all. He already thought he'd have to abandon the Blizzard and it's fleet. That would have been desasterous. All the things about Avalanche all of Lylat could have found out.

"Well, then let's go, I feel like I prefer the safe exit right now. Would you be so kind to take your shoes off and follow me." They did as they were asked and were lead by him through the narrow corridor in the back of the room. It was obviously part of a small appartment, as the first door on the left was still open, with a bathroom behind it and the second on the right, with a Kitchen in bad shape. Two dirty frying pans were still on the stove and the basin was full of dirty dishes. That person definately was living here on his own.

It was surprising to Fox, that he even had the time to take such an exact look. The reason was Falco and Glacier standing in front a solid metal door at the end of the appartment, obviously waiting for something. Falco was already about to say something as their escort suddenly turned around and went all the way back.

"Ah, I knew I forgot something." He sat down on the desk, typed something on the table and spoke "Barb?" There was silence for a while. Then they all could hear a response. Someone seemed to open a conference from within the club, as the noise from there with the music and everything was audible along with her voice.

"Yes?"

"I'm leaving with our guests now. I'll be gone for a while and we're taking the car..." He rapidly stopped talking and turned around to Fox and Falco. "I assume one of you can drive." A simultaneus "Sure.", came from both of them. He resumed to adressing the woman. "Ok, can you get it back when you can spare a moment?"

"Of course. But before you go..."

"What?"

"Tell the birdie I'm not helping him out next time."

Glacier hesitated, they couldn't see his face, but he was likely to have been startled by that."Eh...ok..."

The call broke off. He went back to his guests but stopped. "Mr Lombardi...did you do anything to annoy Barbara?"

Their new employer looked anything but pleased by this, but that didn't impress Falco at all. "I just told that fat little b..."

Fox quickly let his boots go and moved his hand up to hold his comrade's beak shut, before he could say any more regrettable things. "I'm not sure, what happened, they just both made strange gestures. I think he insulted her or something."

"Wait." Glacier went past them to hit a big button, that seemed to set some mechanisms in motion, somewhere behind the solid metal door. Then he turned to them again. "Ok." He paused, then looked up and raised his voice. "Why did you do that? That's not good at all. When she's like this, she always extends Kitty Hour, and you have no idea of the impact that has on the sales. Why? I mean Why?"

"Mmmnphngn" Falco's struggling grew stronger, Fox had to hold his grip on his easily annoyed friend a bit tighter in order to prevent unnecessary escalations, but it was still possible. At least with both hands, as it turned out. Falco tried to free himself, but they had been in similar situations before. It wasn't that easy any more.

"I'm sorry about that. It's just the way he is. He can be kinda impulsive when he's nervous."

Glacier folded his arms. "You mean rude and insulting?" He sighed. "Well I guess going on and on about it won't be of any use."

He turned to the door that had opened by then and asked them to follow through. After Falco had calmed down, he was let go, they both picked up their boots and followed their escort into the elevator in front of them. The surrounding was much more rustic all of a sudden. Once the door closed behind them, they could have been in a factory for all they could see. It didn't take more than a few seconds, before they arrived somewhere above, hopefully the surface.

The walls in the barely lit appartment were dark enough, but this next room with a solid floor, other than the carpet floor in the appartment, was absolutely pitch black. They heard the peeping noise from typing the pin for unlocking the car and the locking mechanisms open right in front of them. After they got adapted to the dark, at least for a bit, they couldn't make out what model it was, but they found it in any case.

As Glacier was about to enter what seemed to be a second backseat on the left side, Fox insisted on him getting in at the front instead. He didn't want Falco to pick any fights any more before they had talked about the whole thing with Peppy. He always knew how decisions were to be made. If they were about to make a mistake, then Peppy would know first. Falco got in in one of the backseats and Fox and Glacier at the front.

After getting in, the light from inside the car made everything a lot more visible. It seemed to be some sort of pretty narrow garage. On both sides, there were pillars everywhere some just straight, and some diagonal, all connecting the floor and the ceiling. The whole car was a lot smaller than most of what people used to drive on Corneria. Instead of sheer size, it was longer, with a third set of seats in the back. Also, in front of Glacier, there was nothing to steer it with. The controls were on Fox' side.

Fox was slightly confused. "That's weird.", he said to himself.

"Oh I don't drive. I never do...oh you mean the whole thing. Hehe, there are no cars that look like that. It's a modified sleigh from my homeworld. If you ever find one of these and it's not mine, it's stolen. Size is expensive and can always be beaten, but uniqueness always trumps from my point of view." He started typing something on the communicator on his right arm.

The next thing that happened, was that something seemed to be moving. Both mercenaries looked out to both sides. It took a while, until they took note of the walls moving downwards, but the daylight emerging from the top end of the front wall and extending itself downwards indicated the whole garage was actually moving up.

While they were slowly moving up, Fox decided to take a look at the controls in front of him. It used a wheel and there were almost no touchscreens or attached pads anywhere. Only a few screens for side- and backviews, GPS and one more. That confusing guy wasn't kidding when he said it wasn't a real car. But when taking a close look, at least everything needed to drive in town appeared to be there. He started the machine to warm up the engines. You never know with modded vehicles.

He adjusted the GPS to guide him back to the harbor. Below it a screen flashed up. There were various informations sidescrolling through it along with some music playing. But all Fox and Falco could pick up was the words "Look out!" scrolling through the screen and generic background singers singing "Star Rule" or something. There wasn't more, as the cat in the left seat turned it off with a sudden speed. It distracted Falco from his strong distrust by rendering him curious. "What was that from?"

The cat's tone took on a certain nervousness. "Eh, long story."

Falco simply waved that excuse aside. "This is taking forever, we've got time."

"Ok, it's just an opening song from an album of some colleagues of a friend of mine..." He turned around to look at Falco. "They regularly perform in a place not far from here. Who knows. If everything goes well, you might be invited to watch the whole thing yourself. People from all over the city visit it." The moving garage was on level with the street now, which had Fox leave it and enter the road. Glacier continued. "Sometimes, even interstellar visitors stop by. You might even meet some old friends of your own." With a sudden grin, he sat back straight into his seat and typed something on his communicator again, presumably to close the garage.

Driving through Gambling Avenue was smoother than expected. And things didn't look as bad, if you progressed through them without as much time to look at them, as when walking. To be back in daylight was similarly comfortable too. Having a few moments without Glacier babbling or Falco picking a fight gave him opportunity to reflect everything. All the information, the client's reactions, the security-filled environment, all of it.

Besides everything else, a certain thought popped up in Fox's mind. There were things that gave him the impression, that this man knew more about Star Fox than your everyday private employer would. For starters, he knew from the start that they were five, along with what species everyone belonged to. They hadn't taken on a similarly central role as back in the Anglar Blitz. And at the end of that, they were just two. He couldn't know they were five without informing himself thoroughly. On the other hand, Slippy had set up sites with all necessary information both on the Cornerian and the Gormian network. Gorm... a planet similarly central and interstellar to Corneria, but in the outer systems...in the same system as Kew...no. No matter how much he wanted it, after this draught, he couldn't allow his demons to haunt him any more. To trap him in Lylat. Fortune largely came from interstellar availability. The last two years had taught him that well enough.


	4. Devious

Chapter 4 Hidden claws

"I can't wait to meet Slippy Toad. I mean THE Slippy Toad." And all of a sudden, he went blabbering again. At least he couldn't keep it up for long, as they were arriving at the harbor already.

"Slippy of all people? Really dude? Of all of Star Fox you're eager to meet him?" Falco's question did very well have a point. He himself was a reknowned ace pilot, Fox was known as the leader of Star Fox throughout half the Galaxy, and Peppy had served as General of the Cornerian Armada for two years.

"Yep. I'll be pestering him soooo strongly with questions. I'm so eager to hear what he is up to next. This is going to be great."  
Falco simply sighed and stopped talking. He figured it'd be best not to ask in the first place, every time you asked him something, he just avoided it and made even more questions apparent. Hopefully, the rabbit would make him talk a bit more. Falco for his own part was tired of trying to find out anything.

Fox could already see the staircase they had come from on the right side and was about to just pull over and halt at some space at the side. There were enough of these right around them, but Glacier startled him.

"What are you doing?" He sounded and looked very confused.

Fox didn't feel like talking back at him. Frankly, he didn't even feel like talking at all, but it was necessary sometimes. He brought up the strength to answer quietly "I was placing this thing down he..."

"We can't park it out here. It has to be in the carpark, where Barbara is sure to find it. I don't know what way she comes along." He gave Fox a few seconds to react and have the sleigh move again. "Come on, what are you expecting? Some monotonous robot parking cars in the carpark?" Glacier turned around, hoping to have Falco say something, but before he could ask, he already recieved an answer.

"Nope."

After waiting a few seconds, Fox silently agreed to do so. He steered it into the carpark. Shining arrows luminescent arrows on the ground and on the walls pointed out the route to take within, leading him in a circle, making one round at every level. He had to move a few levels downward to find a free spot that suited this can of a car's picky owner, as he would only be satisfied by a spot if it had what he called "premium security".

They were about to enter UL7, as they finally found one with solid reinforced walls on both sides, closed hatches, presumably for turrets or the like around it and an extendable high-power-laser-based wall. While the sleigh was still extending it's chains in order to stand without the engine running, Glacier took a look on his communicator, typed in some codes for confirmation and they left. After they had left the space, he tapped one last time on it, and the wall extended itself, making it pretty impossible to enter.

While following the arrow to the lift, Glacier contacted Barbara to tell her he had paid for four hours. The last hour felt like ten to Falco. And he knew it was still going to be a long day. The doors of the lift slid open and made way for a wide, well-lit room, with the walls reflecting the light in a slighly blueish grey. It was a public harbor, so they couldn't expect it to prioritize the momentary user. It would take a while.

Upon gazing into the mirror in boredom, Falco noticed their escort standing in a frozen stance and glaring at him with very creepy, wide open eyes. The right one was slightly twitching, but other than that, they were completely open. He first pretended not to notice. But this annoying elevator just seemed to want to put him off, as it wouldn't cease to take every opportunity to extend this painful moment with another stop and random strangers going in and out.

He tried to ignore it, but his patience was severely taxed already, and he couldn't resist it any more. Instead of eyeing him while looking away, he faced him straight and burst out: "What is wrong with you?" He was hoping it would make the creepy cat stop it, but it just kept maintaining this disturbing glare.

A few seconds passed, until he spoke with an unusually calm voice: "You happen to dye your feathers?" This did it for Falco. Something was absolutely wrong with this guy. First it was just some sensation of his, but this proved it. He gave Fox a demanding look, but he just pretended not to notice. Partly because they weren't the only ones in the lift. It was full of people, of which some were already looking at the two engaged in this wondrous dialogue.

While waiting for the bird's answer, a gecko on the other side of the room even cleared his throat. And it caught Falco's attention. "Who're you looking at?!" But as he saw the man turned around, he turned back at Glacier: "No I don't dye my feathers, all falcons are blue right? Right?" He was getting louder and louder, hoping to force that guy to snap out of whatever was going on. "Of course I do! How could I possibly be blue?"

And this time it actually worked. Glacier's stance eased up to a relaxed straight standing and his look turned back to normal. "Ah ok, just wondering. Could have been some mixture. I'm quarter of a tiger for instance. And that's why I've got stripes."

Well it wasn't quite the miracle it seemed to be, but at least he had traded some terrifying sort of trance for simple delusions. Falco just lifted his head, gave the deluded cat a cynical smile and folded his arms. "You don't have stripes..."

His confidence didn't startle that tiger wannabe though. "Look closely." Still only looking at Falco's reflection in the mirror, he pointed at the tip of his tail with his hand.

Falco took a close look, and could actually see three barely visible, small black stripes. Now that was it. "Aw come on! This is nothing!"

"You do see it, therefore it exists." He started having fun annyoing the bird. Their assignment being bound to him made annoying Mr. Lombardi feel similar to annoying a caged lesser bird. It's fun but no consequences could possibly occur.

Just a few more stops later, each one only for one or two passengers, they arrived at bay 3, the one Peppy and the Toads were waiting in. You could tell from the suddenly risen number of people walking past in all directions, that late afternoon was starting. Visitors to Corneria City were to start going back to their ships and leaving. Those wanting to stay there were arriving in a bigger hurry, hoping to arriving at their destinations before rush hour takes it's toll on their time.

The three of them just walked straight past cruisers, fighters, larger ships, there was no predominant type of cargo or origin of passerby you could encounter in this particular part of the city. This was one of the few advantages the "Smuggler's Trail", as it was referred to by the people that knew their way through it's shady corners. Falco had worked a lot there, shipping goods from place to place without asking questions and depositing and selling stolen ones. Often hiding them in abandoned buildings. Always at the risk of getting caught with evidence. Falco was very glad to leave this place at last.

But even upon leaving the site of one of his less enjoyable past times, the bad feeling he was having since they set out to follow the mysterious message to that infuriatingly annoying guy didn't fade for good. There were less sinister parts to the Smuggler's Trail, but hiding not even just in a cellar but below it and with an emergency exit had a very, very familiar taste to the whole situation. Even if it was to hide from the Venomians for that one occasion, the hideout he and Fox had been in was surely not set up spontaneously. It must have been used regularly.

His first guess would have been the whole thing being a single lie, only to have them help him in some dirty work. But there was something that didn't fit into the picture. If this were the case, why hire of all people Star Fox? For some errand, any group of regular thugs that bought themselves some halfway usable fighters, would have been more than enough and nowhere near the price the help of an elite mercenary unit was at.

He was trying to figure out what possible outcomes this was to have, but he got torn away from his thoughts, as they had arrived at the bridge. From behind the window, a relieved rabbit had a closer look to be sure about what he was seeing. He looked very surprised when seeing the three of them, ut opened the door nonetheless..

"About time you came back. The lovebirds are starting to lose their minds already." He slightly tilted his head towards the back of the Bridge, where the two Toads were jumping in a circle and singing in randomly arranged and anything but pleasant tones, until they started taking note of their colleagues having arrived.

By then, Fox had gathered himself again and introduced their guest. "Team, we got a new assignment. We're escorting him. His name is Glacier, and he seems to be the owner of a..."

"I know who this is. I've met him before." He knew what Fox was about to tell him so he thought he'd rather interrupt unnecessary explanations. "Nice to meet you again, Glacier Tagore, from Avalanche Mechanics. How come you of everyone needs our help?"

The person Peppy was addressing with unexpected respect seemed quite nervous for a second, but switched back into it's usual act after a while. He shook Peppy's hand with both of his own, but his look made it pretty obvious for everyone, that he was rather looking for his own confidence than for that of the people around him. "Very pleasing to meet you again, General, I am honored by your presence."

With everyone else watching, mostly to wait until the sudden exchange of politenesses would fade, Peppy smirked at this aquaintance's flattering attitude. But he did notice something was off. His vision had gotten increasingly dependant on his glasses in the recent years, but he was still very attentive about other people's facial features, and the person in front of him, were definately not Glacier Tagore.

He was sure to do something about that soon, but for the moment, he decided to play along. At least until they were leaving Corneria, rendering their guest incapable of escaping. He noticed the others were still waiting for him to say something. "Well thank you, I've bee wondering what you were doing since the uprising."

"Uprising?", Slippy burst out.

"Yeah, where do you know him from anyway?" Fox was eager to know more about who their new employer actually was. But he expected anything but getting any answers so quickly.

Glacier decided to stay out of this one and let the General do the explaining.

"You remember Andrew Oikonny, right? The heir to the emperor Andross?"

Slippy stuck to the feeling of being the one he was talking to mainly. "Sure"

Falco had to add in his two cents. "An emperor wannabe, nothing more."

"Well right after the Anglar Blitz, even though he had barely recovered from partaking in it himself, he thought the cleansing of the Venomian waters was his chance to launch a new uprising against the Cornerian army as long as it was weakened."

"I thought Dash was the leader of Venom"

"He was, but Oikonny was hoping to take his place if he would overthrow the Cornerian dominance over Lylat. He gathered whoever was ready to join his cause and had more followers than you would guess, simply because the chances of victory were so much higher after the Blitz. I was forced to use any opportunity to repel him I could get. And several parties from the private sector offered selling us raw amounts of aircraft. The quality wasn't worth the price. It was far from it, but it might have been one the factors that supported our victory. The main contact on this deal was him."

Falco took a step towards Glacier, facing him with a menacing stance. "You pathetic creep. Capitalizing on a weak phase of the army like this. You make me sick."

Glacier on the other hand, took a step away and moved along the back part of the Bridge while talking. "Yes, I knew that already. At least about you. But let's not describe it in this incriminating fashion. Let's just say I've saved the day..." While talking he started moving his finger up and down along the syllables. "...and made some money on the way." With this, he just looked at everyone with open arms and a wide open smile. Freezing that way never caused anything but confusion in the people around him, but he would still do it anyway.

Peppy used the opportunity to have the door close and get back to the Bridge's controls. Once he got the ship to lift off and leave the bay, he interrupted their guest's attempt to start a conversation with Slippy and Amanda. "Say Mr Tagore, back in the day, after we repelled the uprising, you held a celebration of our victory in that other investor's manor. Where was that again?

He didn't expect a long distraction, so he just turned and answered. "Uh...Somewhere around Col, wasn't it? On Razoc."

Peppy could tell he was still looking at him. He had given up on the blind spot he was in, in order to test if his eyes were deceiving him after all, but they weren't. "Who knows, I might visit that place again sometime." It worked. He could hear the steps of 'glacier' turning around again. He immediately turned on the autopilot, drew out his blaster, pointed it right at the head of their obviously clueless passenger and interrupted him once again with a much more serious voice. "It was Tereb".

Glacier's reaction was delayed for a few seconds, but it was in every situation. He stopped talking, turned his head around, and adressed the Hare again. "Pardon?"

"I said, it was Tereb"

"Rea -woah" He didn't notice the suddenly suspicious rabbit pointing a gun at him up until then. "What's wrong? Might I know why I am being threatened with a weapon?" Hoping it would end soon, whatever it was now, Glacier slowly put his hands up. He looked around to the others, but they were all either too surprised to talk or eager to hear what the General was talking about.

"I've seen Glacier Tagore's face, and I don't forget faces. What's your real name, impostor?"

With that he knew what was going on. But he couldn't just carelessly explain the whole thing. You never know who might be listening and how. What he could do was assess how safe it was and how much safer it needed to be for him to feel free to tell them. "Eh, wait a second please." Before the Hare could have started to shout again, he asked the frogs: "Has anyone been in this ship in the last...let's say ten hours?" With the pink one answering in the negative, he asked right again: "Are this ship's walls soundproof?" But he had overestimated the General's temper.  
"You're not asking any questions right now..."

He was hoping he wouldn't have to raise his voice. He only did that when other ways to go seemed futile. " I will tell you, but not before I feel free to do so. If you want to find out at all, let me have this wish." He saw the surprisingly dangerous Hare standing there with his blaster still pointed at Glacier's head. "We both know there are a lot of things that suggest very well not just shooting without asking here. For a start, we're still on Corneria. It is murder here and I have by far more evidence and witnesses ready to prove I was leaving with you last, than you could ever get under control. Also, if I were an impostor as you say, I'd be sure to hold information as to why I'm here right now, wouldn't I?" He saw he was making his point. General Hare was lowering the gun. Thank god, he was already starting to believe the great Peppy Hare would actually do something stupid.


	5. Various enemies

He took a step towards the foreign cat. "That explanation of yours better be a good one. And don't try to confuse us. We want it clear." He gave it one of his most fearsome inflections, but the shock on the impostor's face didn't last for more than a few seconds.

He sighed and answered in a calm tone with a smile: "Don't worry. This story isn't particularly long. Once I'm in a safe room in your Great Fox, I will tell you everything about it."

He didn't have another choice than to tell them. He was sure they wouldn't actually escort him back to Jorania if he didn't, despite him feeling extremely uncomfortable about it. They had him stand at the front side, where they all could see him and had enough distance to shoot him safely, if necessary, while the fox told everyone what happened in a very detailed manner. Even as far as to mentioning the falcon's fight with Barbara.

Glacier hated travelling with other people. Especially with them looking at him like that if they even bothered to. He had not the faintest bit of intuition, therefore he could never tell. Was it distrust? Was it spite? Was it wonderment? Was it dislike? It never made a difference to him. Whatever it really was, he only saw hatred in their eyes. It had always been like that. Whatever he would do, if he would try to react normal, or be kind, or want to help other people. Except for a very small number of exceptions, everyone he interacted with would eventually end up hating him. No matter if it was justified, or, as mostly, it was not.

But trying to be a person he obviously wasn't predestined to be, was no logical way to go. He had long given up treating anyone other than his friends and useful people like these mercenaries with anything but the same hate he felt emanating from everyone else. There was a time, when he didn't. When he would be kind and honest to everyone around him. But Corneria was a place that penalizes these things, even while calling them 'virtues' at the same time. Back then, he would just swallow their hatred, contain it. But the more the black flames would seem to overwhelm him, the more the depth of the darkness in his very core would grow, the more afraid he was of becoming something very, very awful in the future. And he was absolutely sure, if he hadn't had some people who created at least a few happy memories, he would have definately gone completely insane long ago.

As the Great Fox II drew closer, Peppy contacted ROB to have him open the outer hatch, to let them pass through the aerial gate. Falco went up to Glacier and gripped his arms, which were behind his back, before the surprised cat could react. "You better not try to pull anything off, I'm keeping an eye on you."

"Don't worry you'll understand everything eventually. I do nevertheless have to ask what kind of food you have here. You don't happen to have nip-spiced fish or something do you?" He did talk back, but he moved along with Falco's lead.

The bridge slowed down upon reaching the Great Fox II and was carefully moved through the aerial gate back into the hangar, then slowly landed on the solid floor. In it's side the door opened and a bar extended, providing the smooth path from the inside of the Bridge even if only about more of a foot of heighth difference towards the surface outside.

One by one, the Star Fox team stepped back into the wondrous insides of the Great Fox II, a ship by far not as legendary as it's predecessor. When Falco pushed Glacier towards the exit, having him see it's insides for the first time, Glacier told himself, that he shouldn't expect too much. At least there was hope of restoring the old one with young Ar's advanced building methods.

As they led him through it, he didn't have much time to try and infuriate the bird, as he was looking around, trying to see as much of it as possible. The entire floor of the hangar was composed of plates. Wide white hatches enclosed other aerial shields. In front of them, the floor was tilted into several pits enclosed by diagonally upwards-laid plates leading toward the very upper section they were walking along. The ceiling was similarly built. It would even look quite clean if it weren't for the small black structures arranged along...

His thoughts were interrupted by a bang on his head coming from behind.

"What're you looking around so nosey?" The large bird interrupted Glacier's thoughts, giving him a bang on the head from behind.

This didn't apply to the manners General Hare preferred and had him turn around to calm his colleague down. He pushed Falco's left shoulder back, of which the arm was the one that beat their escort. "Easy, boy. Don't forget, he is not our prisoner. If not our guest, he's at least an escort. For now that is. You can do as you please if he turns out to be a spy. I promise.

This was not the kind of situation Glacier was hoping to end up in. He tried to give the General a tankful look. But he didn't seem to notice, so he guessed he didn't look as thankful as he was trying to. He wasn't likely to ever understand how intuition works in his whole life.

As they left the Hangar, they entered a small network of very narrow corridors. At one or two sides, depending on which, there were doors and frames indicating windows which could be opened if needed. Everything had a very bright shade of baige, except for the smooth, blue floor. With all the indicated rooms being very close to each other, he guessed these were the living quarters. If the rooms looked the way the corridors suggested, he would be able to get used to this. All the places he had to stay at were quite similar after all. But he surely knew one lot of people who wouldn't even enter such a place, even if only to visit it. Logically, he was trying not to be close to anyone of that kind apart from issues around work.

It appeared to be time to take security measures. "Ehm..." The team turned to face him. He got their attention as hoped. "I have to ask this. It's really important." Fox took a step toward him to ask what it was. "Could we talk in a room cut off from the comms? And in general without comms? Except for mine of course, mine is safe."

Falco was about to snap once again about what that was about, but the General understood at once. "Slow down, he didn't want to tell us in the bridge. He just doesn't want to risk any third party to hear it. Take them off, we're using my room. They took off their comms, went to the upper level and took the second door to the left. Before they took them off though, they contacted a coordination android they called "ROB" to have him prepare the General's room for an interrogation, unlocking the manual opening of the door and turning off the power inside it, once they entered.

´The bird let him go, but pushed him towards a wall, opposite to the entrance door. "Alright, now why is Peppy saying you aren't the real Glacier?"

"Wait, am I absolutely sure not to be overheard by any.."

"For Crud's sake, we're completely cut off, spit it out already!" He was screaming every word already. Maybe he shouldn't have asked the same question so often on the way.

"Alright, alright. Listen." He faced the general. "The reason why you think you've never seen me, is because you never have. Even right now, half the galaxy has no idea where I am, and the other half believes that they - 'know' - that I'm on some estate on the Gromian countryside."

He heard Fox take a step towards him. "Then who was that? And why...who is he?"

"He's a bounty hunter." Judging from gasping, and the loud "what", from one of the frogs, they were pretty shocked. On the other hand, that was kind of predictable. This time, even General Hare was angered. "You sent a bounty hunter to a meeting with the very heads of the Cornerian state and army? What was he up to? Why was he really there?"

There really was no way around spilling it. "He doesn't move to places due to different assignments. He wasn't after any of you. You see, he has actually two jobs. He is an actor, and a bounty hunter. And he has only one assignment. If he is ever after any heads, it's the ones of other bounty hunters. Namely the ones that tend to try and kill him. Him being there when talking about the fleet sale wasn't connected to any sort of scheme or so. Everything he does is represent me and be wherever I'm announced and known to be. He won't do any harm to anyone who isn't after information on him or his head. Noone who is willing to do me any harm knows my face."

The growling made their leader's anger or confusion pretty apparent. "How is this supposed to work? Wouldn't they recognize you?"

"Most people just see the white cat and think 'some Allinger', they often don't even tell the difference. And any buisness acquaintance that has any contact with Avalanche only saw his face throughout their lives. The rest, photos in databases and such, let's just say it's easy to take care of that kind of thing. If you're wondering, his forename is Robert. But I can't tell you his second one." All left to do after that, was to look if this was enough.

And it seemed to almost be enough for the Hare. He had one question left though. "Why the whole thing?"A question Glacier heard about a lot of things, of which he similarly wondered, how the answer was not apparent. It seemed he just had to adapt and answer it in a way they had more understanding for.

"No reason you would understand. Noone does. Initially it was just my paranoya and the coincidence of meeting him. But the thing is, he did actually have targets. He did get attacked. By now, he even has permanent body guards, and still people try it. The competition..."He put on a more sarcastic tone and exaggeratedly used the more 'sophisticated' accent he was taught back when he was younger. "...does not wish to stain itself with areas outside of their domicils, yet they do have the will and the means to pay for dirty work." Yes, even in dire situations he liked making fun of these 'acquaintances' of his.

"Dirty work? You mean kidnapping and murdering!" He wasn't sure if the fox had an idea of how strongly he hit the nail on the head with that comment.

"Rarely, but yes, that too." Not rarely at all. "Partly it's just extensively competitive behaviour, but it's also a 'strong dislike', as the Cornerians like to call it. People in similar positions as mine live in a closed society, that doesn't tolerate fellow people in their ranks, if they weren't born to be in them. First, they will try to stand in such outsiders' way, deny them deeds they wouldn't to their kin. If that doesn't work, and mostly it does, they will try to find other methods...more direct ones...or extreme.." They were kind of like normal people, only that their values were based on birthright, instead of conformity. Of course there were other reasons, too, but mentioning these would have been slightly counterproductive.


	6. Admiration and Desire

Peppy did have a very hard time judging the foreigner's authenticity. It seemed far-fetched, but it did explain it plausibly. There were things back then, that absolutely matched with this explanation he heard. But he couldn't be absolutely sure. He looked over to Fox, who had caught himself again, as it was him, who was to make a decision at this moment, not Peppy.

Fox on the other hand, just gave this questioning look right back at him, asking: "So, what do you think? You met him last. This make any sense to you?"

Peppy went back to facing an impatient-looking Glacier, with his body tilted to the wall and quietly humming a timer-soundtrack from "Corneria's favourite quiz show". He was to decide here, but he just shook his head. "I it seems to fit, but I can't overlook all the pieces as of yet. It does feel genuine, but I'd need to sleep over this to get all the pieces together.

The cat spoke up "Venom did break the contracts by attacking the ship that brought me here in the first place and they're likely to do that again. For all I know, they might be destroying my ship in this very second. I doubt that sleeping over it is within the time we have right now. Mr. McCloud, I need something to work with right now. Are you doing this?"

Everyone faced Fox. Whatever he did, it was his decision as the team leader. He looked down, closed his eyes, hesitated for a moment, to take a breath and then looked back up with open eyes. "I officially took it, back on the surface. We're doing it either way."

Everyone sighed, Falco gave it a simple "hrmph", but didn't comment on Fox' decision any further. He was to talk to him about the whole thing again, later. Peppy gave ROB green light to unlock the doors.

"Geez, good this is done.", Slippy burst out before turning off to heading outside with his wife.

The relieved Glacier was already hurrying after them, asking them to stop, only to be pulled back by a hand holding a tight grip on his shoulder. It weren't the wing bones of the easily annoyed falcon though, but the hand of the General. "Not so fast. I do have some issues to question you on as of yet. The others may be leaving but we're still having a talk. You can send the coordinates to our main panel, like you did back when you sent us those messages, but we have time to talk, while we're on the way..."

While still doing something on his comm, presumably exactly what Peppy asked him to, he still cut him off"..on the way? Your ship can't open gates? What kind of a bad parody of the legendary Great Fox is this?"

"yes, it may take a while, but - ROB?"

From a speaker in the ceiling came a monotonous, tinny voice: "estimated travel time on hyperspeed to recently recieved coordinates is 2 hours, 38 minutes and 43 seconds."

By then, Falco was the last one to leave the two of them behind, closing the door. It had become a routine that Peppy made further inquiries after interrogations on his own. He did know to defend himself against single opponents with a weapon after all.

Glacier didn't like the feeling of being locked up, but he guessed he needed to put some more effort into wriggling himself out of this. "Ok, what other than what you know already is it, that you want to know?"

"I can tell you're not being honest to us. What are you really up to on Jorania?"

It appeared that the General wouldn't leave it be, unless Glacier used his last resort: Sarcasm. "Yes, I was lying to you all the time. I'm actually a tyrant that suppresses the Joranians and enslaves them for a lifetime only to burn them alive afterwards. And of pure generosity, the Venomians that used them for agriculture just happened to appear to save the day." It gave the General the look Glacier was hoping to achieve. Now, he only needed to make him answer. He tilted his head towards the General, kept his eyes half-closed in a cynical manner and opened his arms for a questioning gesture. "Does that make sense to you? If yes, then really? Really? I mean really?"

The calmed look indicated the General was finally giving up on his obsession with these unnecessary questions. He sighed and took a seat on a chair on the opposite side of the room. "Alright then, that's that. Then there's another thing. You seem to know quite a lot about Star Fox. How come?"

"I'm a Star Fox fan."

The startled hare shook his head. "A what?"

"You know, a fan of what you do. There are many of us. Actually, since the founding of "GFC:SF", there are actual conventions only surrounding you and your work. Look." He opened something on his comm and showed it to Peppy.

It was a photo of Glacier, looking into the camera with a wide open smile and giving a thumbs up. Next to him stood two wolves with annoyed faces. One of them wore black-brownish leather clothing and the other wore glasses and a suit. In the background there was a plane hanging, with "SF:C BM02" on it in thick blue letters and the symbol of Star Fox right below it. Among all the people in the background, you could see ones that actually tried dressing up as members of Star Fox, bearing their style of clothing from Peppy hare's white jacket and reddish clothing within to a small child wearing Slippy's yellow overall and his red and white cap and one vixen barely clad in yellowish armor even had her fur dyed blue just to look like Krystal.

"We know about practically everything you do, except for presumably secret or very small missions. There is even a lot of footage of your time in the Great Fox during some of your greatest missions. Are you absolutely sure there was no sign of any of this?" Glacier looked like he couldn't believe that Peppy wouldn't have a clue.

And actually, he wasn't that wrong. Peppy did recall Slippy babbling something about recording missions and writing reports about them in case someone other than the Cornerian military and other customers wanted to know about their work. Presumably, he didn't take note of it attentively enough. Slippy was pretty much taking care of their whole "PR-department", as Slippy called it. Except for Amanda, noone was all too interested in what was going on there.

But apparently, it was interesting, if it attracted a community as wide as this man implied. "I think I know what you're talking about, Slippy mentioned it. Alright, that explains that. That's all I wanted to know for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, you were ready to answer without really interrogating you after all. "

"There is one thing. I've long waited for the day to come when I finally have an opportunity to hire you and meet the one and only Fox McCloud. But upon meeting him, I didn't quite hear him talk very much. At least a lot less than he seems to talk at other occasions. Even a lot less, than in more recent ones. Is it something I'm doing. Some sort of Fox-based code I'm constantly breaking or something? Because I'm really not getting what I'm doing wrong at all. It feels like I'm being accused of stabbing him, but without any dagger appearing. Especially just now, when the one moment was there, at which he had to talk, and..."

Peppy simply made a calming gesture with an open hand, with the palm pointing downwards. "I know what this is, give me a moment." He groaned, adjusting himself to his seat. "Ok, I'm guessing it's because of your accent. You remind him of someone he lost years ago. But he never recovered. She was a member of ours, the first and only female one back then..." He wanted to continue, but he already got interrupted, and it didn't seem like the cat could be stopped from telling what it started.

"Ah, the beautiful Krystal, one of the last Cerinians. The narrations tell tales of her difficult nature and her exotic appearance.." He sighed, his whole body dropping as if a distant disappointment came to the surface, that never wore off. "...it's not half as exciting if you've already been to the place she comes from. Everyone looked like that there."

Now that was something else. Peppy had to dig into that. He bent forwards, holding himself with both hands, as he was getting tired and narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "You were on Cerinia?"

Glacier spoke casually, as if there wasn't much to see on this mysterious planet, barely anyone remembers. "Yes, It's actually a neighboring world of the planet I refer to as my homeworld. Allinga is in the same system, thing is just, these Cerinians were a story for themselves. The widely populated areas were very, very warm, which was why they wore barely any clothing. All of them were blue, and they barely made use of any technology. On the other hand, they were telepathic. Most likely the only mammalian telepaths in the Galaxy, if not the universe."

He turned around, strolling from side to side between the entrance door and the wall on the opposite side. "There was something fascinating about them, though. They had a history, but one we cannot nearly understand. There were no wars, no conflicts, no crimes, not even mental problems. They could dive deep into each others' mind and solve or resolve everything, even before it could rise up. Everyone, even visitors, was an open book to everyone. Terrifying and fascinating at the same time, isn't it?"

Peppy nodded, but didn't say anything. He was busy understanding the things he was just told, that Krystal would always refuse to tell. They did respect her wish, not to be remembered of what she had lost, but it was very well a lot they might have wanted to know.

"Now back to my question, or rather what I really wanted to ask, what exactly happened? Is it related to her leaving Star Fox joining Star Wolf?" It was unclear to Peppy, how much that cat knew and if what it knew was even correct.

"She didn't leave. She was thrown out." This already made Glacier's lower jaw drop simply from surprise. "He wanted her to give up on a life that threatens her life every day, but she wouldn't listen. She entered the scene of hirable gunsagain right away, by using the liking a Star Wolf member had taken of her."

"And by a certain Star Wolf member, you mean Panther Caroso, right?"

"Exactly. The problem was, Star Wolf tricked..."

He was interrupted in a harsh, impatient tone. "Yes, yes we all know that part, please skip to when Star Wolf defeated the Anglars."

"Alright. You see, Fox was devastated by the fact that Krystal willingly tricked her. We had to live with the shame of the team we had always beaten on so many occasions had not just caught up to us, but got supported by the very woman Fox loved up to the point of being the glorious heroes, leaving us with days of work and empty hands. But not only that. A few months later, Fox and Falco, as the only members back then, were ordered to guard a load of shipment from Katina. Where they faced Star Wolf, once again."

Glacier's eyes widened with excitement while silently listening. It seemed he enjoyed hearing a maybe never heard story about Star Fox first-handedly ."That's when Wolf O'Donnell told them, that Krystal had died in an explosion. This was something he never recovered from. Wolf's indifferent way of talking about it, made it quite clear to Fox, that he wasn't being lied to. He traveled to Titania, where he and Wolf had found the device, to get thoughts together again.

He hesitated. "I can't tell what exactly happened there, but what I know is, that Fox left for the desert on his own, and came back the morning after. But his opinion on a lot of things had changed. He wanted to spend some time outside of the system in which he had met this huge setback and looked for work outside. And he found a lot..."

"Yes I know, I read all about the stuff he did outside. At least that which he did in the last two years. Or two years ago..."

"I'm not finished yet. It goes on. I joined him again, due to work as a General getting too consticting in many ways, and so did Slippy and Amanda, but then something else happened. We were assigned to protect a tycoon that was working in the preparation of metals, who was sure that some secret organization he didn't want to name to us had sent bounty hunters to kill him in that very night. We waited, and were prepared, but an explosion in a room nearby caught our attention. In the ruins of the blasted room, we encontered the first of them. Our morale was strongly compromised, when we noticed it was impossible to catch a single complete look on him - or it - but what ever it was, it wasn't bipedal, it was extremely fast, and it moved only through the shadows. It escaped, but while we were still pursuing it, another explosion was to hear from below, we ran down the staircase, hearing gunshots and more explosions from the first floor, only to face a wall of fire right before us. Through a small breach in it stepped a female fox, with blue fur, purple hair, and barely any armor. But when she was standing there, in range for a safe shot, Fox didn't shoot, he just hesitated, waited for seconds, which seemed like minutes to all of us, while she got picked up by one of her colleagues."

"An eagle armed to the beak. With plates of armor on all larger areas of his body, even including his legs and his wings. A rocket launcher strapped to his back and a one-and-a-half-handed machine gun in each hand. He just told her 'it was done' and she left, introducing herself in the last moment as 'Kursed' and then leaving in a rush. We had to leave, because everything around us was falling apart with one explosion after the other. What was more important about this event itself, was her appearance. She bore the same green gem on her forehead, had the same face, even the same voice, as Krystal, and all of a sudden, Fox was completely resigned. Not due to our assignment having failed, which didn't happen very often. But it was all these things about her, that reminded him so strongly of Krystal. From then on in, his urge to avoid her as strongly as possible, which lead us to the outer systems to find a huge fortune in the first place, made him lead us back to Lylat, and staying there. We didn't leave Lylat for one year straight. And this sure did take it's toll on our profits. There is barely anything considerable to do here for us. I'm sure Star Wolf only gets by by accepting assignments from outside and through some new shady buisness like they always did."


	7. Distraction and Despair

Guess what, I'm back.

And here's the next chapter. Long story short: Something came up again, and before I knew, 2 weeks had passed and I felt too guilty to show up on this end any more. But I had enough of that. I'll keep it going on.

While reading this chapter, please note that by far not everything is a reference. In case you wonder why a certain person doesn't say much in the last part, it's because I don't want to bring political colour into this story. Not now, that is.

Oh and about the chapter's title: I made a mistake with the last one, but corrected it. The Despair belongs into this one. I am sad that no-one mentioned it though.

Also, I'm thinking if I should write one or two spinoffs/alternative stories, destinated in the same universe. One of them being kind of a prequel, showing how Avalanche came to exist and the other being a series of one-shots with Robert meeting all sorts of celebrities, from famous pets, stars from films etc. When you review, please also include an opinion on that.

As for who wonders why it's just "almost a decade" I don't stick to every last bit of the canon, only to almost everything. At the point in "Farewell, beloved Falco", after the events on the surface, where it says that another 5 years had passed, I kinda find that hard to believe and pressed in by force, simply because the handbook to SF:AD states that the game is situated 10 years after SF:64. That's why in this SF-universe, the timespan between SF:64 and SF:AD isn't 10 years, but 5 years and 2 weeks.

* * *

Chapter 7: Distraction and Despair

With a concerned look on his face, Glacier lowered his head. "You mean the smuggling." He sighed. "This is just a lot, give me a second please. He turned around towards the wall and silently sood there for a while. Peppy wanted to speak up, to ask what was...

"Wait...", but he was interrupted. After a few seconds, Glacier took a deep breath, and turned around with one swoop showing a wide open smile."That was one awesome load of information, I'm hearing for the first time and first-hand from you of all people. Thank you for that. Now, off for the..."

"Wait, one last thing. Since the incident Fox seems to feel an intense pain whenever he is reminded of Krystal. You did grow up on Corneria, did you?" The cat silently nodded. "You must have picked up Cornerian far enough to at least assume it around him, didn't you?"

Glacier's face switched to the cynical one he had made when talking about him lying to them when he was accused of the same for the third time. He obviously tried, but he sounded like a teenage girl. "Yea, I could, like, totally talk like this all day. Like, seriously."

"Ok, forget I asked. Do as you please then." This was just too annoying, to have him keep it up.

* * *

The door slided aside to reveal a lit room with a fox lying on his bed, staring absently at the ceiling.

"Sleeping's gonna be pretty hard with that light on."

"I don't even really want to sleep. It'll be worse anyway."

Falco entered the room and took a seat. He knew what it was about. It was about that the whole time. he sighed and went on. "Krystal, huh? Well, you won't have to listen to that scumbag Glacier forever either, so..."

While getting up, Fox interrupted him. "It's too late. It's not just this unnatural pain I feel whenever I'm reminded of her. It's the nightmares that follow it too. Every time I get reminded of Krystal, I have terrifying dreams all night. Always about stuff from the old days. Dreams of endless despair and only rarely a spark of hope coming up to surpass it. Her, my father, Andross, everything."

"You gotta do something about this eventually. It can't go on forever. Let's find time to get you a Psychatrist already." Fox was about to interrupt him again, but Falco just shushed him, to continue. "If you let us work outside of Lylat again, we'll make by far more money than we need. We could afford everything again, even a shrink for you."

He should have known it was about work once again. Falco often came by to ask if they could go back to the routine they used to have beforehand. But by now, Fox started to agree to Falco, silently, he already had agreed by accepting the offer to work on Jorania. He had been emptily gazing at the other side of the room until then, but now he turned to Falco. "You're right. I've been too selfish with staying in Lylat. Denying our purpose to myself and my team." He clenched his fist, like he used to, when he was giving the last words before the team took off for a mission. "From now on, we'll accept work throughout the galaxy, if we get the chance, even throughout the universe."

Falco was indescribably relieved. Finally. The old Fox he knew was finally back. From that moment on, he started to look forward to kicking tail every day again, like they used to. "That's the spirit, keep that up and things will finally turn out for the better." He got up and moved back to the door. "But for now, we've still got about two hours to get some rest before we arrive. And we better use it to make a good impression if that creep is likely to hire us again." And with this, he turned off the lights and left Fox alone in his room.

* * *

They were to arrive at Jorania in two hours time. just enough for Glacier to spend some time with the famous Slippy Toad. He just had to find him first and no matter how small or simply built a carrier is. If it's not one of a kind you've been to, it takes a while to find everything, as especially in ships used in national fleets like this one, there are no directions.

No maps, no signs indicating what's behind which door. He had found his way to the personnel deck, it wasn't that, but he had to open doors and windows that hid all rooms and for all he knew, it could be a bedroom, a recreation room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet, anything. Inbetween he even stumbled across the one and only Fox McCloud, sleeping in one room. Waking him up would have been a disaster.

He also wasn't understanding what they were trying to accomplish by having white everywhere. The blinds, the doors, the walls, even the frames around pads and screens were white. It was irritating. Whoever designed this was an idiot, in his opinion.

At last, he finally opened one door and saw the same chair, the same kind of decorative frames for pictures and screens, the same table and the same kind of bed and the, really the Slippy Toad and his wife Amanda around a corner, holding controllers in their hands, playing some console game. "Hello?"  
They turned around and smiled "Hi, what's up?"  
"I'm sorry I just can't resist. I'm a player and a fan of your 'StarFrog' series and just can't resist using this opportunity to talk to the creator himsel..."

He passed by the door to get a bit closer to the screen. It was a shooter obviously a modern or even slightly futuristic setting. At first he couldn't assign the pictures he saw before him at that moment to where he had seen it before...wait...It couldn't be...these weapons with the yellow lines shining out of them...He stretched out his hand and pointed towards the screen. "Is this really 'Sacred Ring 4'? It's not even out yet."

Slippy first turned to the screen and then back to Glacier. That? Ah yeah, I know someone and he managed to give away a few copies of what's done to people he knows. It's all pretty much done already." Slippy liked the thought of having blown away that guy's mind with this already. That cat seemed to be more of his peer than most of his colleagues.

"Ok, that's pretty impressive." Glacier knew it was pointless, but he nevertheless tried to hide that he was absolutely astounded at the inside. "Ok, back to the actual topic, you're the one behind all these games, right? I mean 'StarFrog'." Slippy nodded. "There are so many questions I and so many people have."

Slippy got this often, when talking or generally communicating to fans of these on-rail shoot-em-ups he made some money with at the side since Fox had defeated Andross for the first time. He sighed. "Ok, I'll see what I can do." he put the controller aside and turned around. "Ok, go ahead. I'll be glad to answer anything I can."

This was the time. The time in capital letters to Glacier. He sat down, to be on eye level with the frogs. "Ok first, about this game that was supposed to be a different one, but you forced it to be reworked, to have half the plot cut out and turned that blue newt Capphire into a frog. Why? Just Why?"

Slippy just laughed and said: "Ah, you see, that game that was offered to be released by the same publisher seemed a lot like what happened on Dinosaur Planet, so it was unavoidable. Weren't it for me forcing this, a parallel game to it from me and my team on Aquas woulda looked like a cheap ripoff. So I had both teams join in for a coproduction instead."

"Wait, so there is a team working for you, and still you're working as a mercenary at the same time?"

"Seems like you got no idea about how much of the money a game sells for, sticks to the publisher before the tiny rest reaches the studio that makes it."

"Hm, guess I could have thought of that." He had to think of something. All the questions he usually would have had were gone. Completely forgotten at this crucial moment. He couldn't keep asking Mr. Toad to state the bleeding obvious, wasting time he could be spend testing the one shooter half the noteworthy part of the galaxy was waiting for.

On the other hand, he couldn't believe he was actually thinking that way, but at this moment, there were more important things at hand, than video games. "I'm sorry, I don't know how..but I've forgotten all the questions I was waiting to ask, right now."

Slippy waved Glacier's shame aside. "Don't worry, I get that a lot, too. We've still got time. Tell me, if you remember some, while we just sit here and keep testing 'Sacred Ring 4' right here."

That reaction from the busy mastermind was quite relieving for the nervous cat. He agreed and left the Toads' room. Back in the corridors, he spent some time walking around it, to memorize where it was, and have some time to think.

If he wanted Star Fox not to cause a huge mess, he needed to brief them on what not to do, if they didn't want the Venomian fleet come crashing down on Jorania. Also, finding a way to keep them in the Great Fox or the Blizzard once they had docked might have been a good idea. But enforcing that in some way would make them want to leave. He usually wouldn't even be in that kind of situation and could just prepare for some trick or plot over a long time.

But this was different. He was in a situation that came up spontaneously, so he had to think of what to do along the way he went. He had prepared an alternative way out of that for the worst case, but he hadn't gotten a confirmation on it going the way he needed it to go. Opening up earns trust, so if he granted them access throughout the Blizzard, they might act according to his suggestion.

That, therefore was a way to go. But only if he created not only trust to himself, but also distrust to Brook. Otherwise, the monkeys might give them bad ideas. What it was like on Jorania, ten years beforehand, was something legitimate and easy to prove if necessary. But he needed more. Maybe the reason why Glacier even was in this situation was something he could work with.

But even when distracting them, the most interesting and therefore most likely to succeed would have been Mikhail, and he didn't know his way with people. Not with mammals, that was...or amphibians...or birds...or reptiles...or fish. In fact, around a strange person like Glacier himself was the best place for Mikhail to spend his time at, after all. He wished Tom was there. he was very good with people. With befriending them and getting them to do what he wants that way. On the other hand, had he been there, then Patrick would have been there, too and he would have known a way around the past incident, right from the start. It so was about time the Flash-Freeze-Project would finally start getting realized.

In the end of the day, this situation wouldn't just clear up in his imagination. He had to work with what he had and do it by himself, for now. He just had to hope something would come up by itself. Maybe he didn't even have to have them distracted but they would do so, by themselves. On the other hand, too much curiosity wasn't good, either.

He knew what was to do. If he explained to them, what exactly happened, that he needed their help, they would understand, that the monkeys overstepped their bounds and clearly choose his side over theirs. But for this, he needed a panel, or a screen. Preferably a large one. He suddenly felt like going to the bridge of the Great Fox II. Not the small, old ship, but the actual ship's bridge.

* * *

Peppy needed to use the time they had to get some rest. He went over to his own unit, closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk.

To get a better picture of what parts of this cat were genuine and which ones weren't, he needed to think back. Back to the time he met him two years beforehand. Back then, as the General, he was also responsible for foreign affairs and had to tend the meetings of the High Cornerian Council as one if it's prime members.

It was situated in a huge amphitheatre, at one side the desk of the three prime members. On the left side, himself, on the right side, the Vice President John Bodah, an old shepherd with a short, white mane and in the center, President Rick Oikonny Redger, a black gibbon, patiently awaiting their guest. The upper seats were filled with Members of the House that made apparent, how international and open-minded Corneria had become.

Not only domestic dogs, but animals of all kinds, reptiles, birds, one snail he couldn't see from below, but it was definately somewhere, mammals, varying from dogs, bears, cats, all sorts of hooved people, and even monkeys. They of all kinds hadn't been allowed to attend here until almost a decade. The more surprising it was, to have the Cornerian head of state be one already.

On the the prime members' desk's opposite side, there was a gap in the upper seats, leaving space for the entrance, through which a snow-white cat in a long, black suit and with a black case in his right hand, came in, accompanied by two large tigers. One at each of his sides, both of them armed to the teeth. handguns and melee weapons of all types were attached all over their bodies. If they made it into this place, he really must have insisted on it.

The Vice President stood up to greet their visitor. "In the name of the United Nation of Corneria, I greet a guest from the private sector. Welcome, Glacier Tagore. I assume you are aware of the circumstances you were allowed entry under." He then sat back into his chair.

The foreigner put his hands together and took a bow. "Yes - sir - I bring an offer from investors and donors throughout the galaxy. A fleet of used ships, not in an equally good condition as the ones you already have, but equally usable and superior in numbers. It's a sale, of course. On acceptation, we will also provide your army with the necessary personnel to man them."

Pausing before and after adressing a prime member of the High Council was an outrage. He had this unnerving, cynical tone, that made a terribly inappropriate disrespect very obvious. If they had been anywhere else, Peppy would have snubbed that man and told him to enter the house with respect and humbleness.

Nevertheless, it was his turn to talk, and take military affairs into his own hands. "We would like to see the offer, before we sign it."  
The cat smiled and lifted his case to open it. Inside was a pile of sheets, which he took out, only to close the case again and move towards the main desk. The security at the sides of it drew their arms and aimed at the tigers, that were about to move along with Mr. Tagore and they reacted appropriately by drawing their own weapons and aiming at the security personnel. The cat said something to the tigers, which had them put their guns away again.

They then finally moved towards the prime desk and handed the offer to the President. After the other two were finished, they passed it to General Peppy, to have a look at it. The prize this fleet would cost was horrendous. Far from anything the state's income would allow by itself. If they were to take it, their financial state would be utterly ruined beyond repair. They had to take out a loan that wouldn't be payed off for over a dozen years. If everything went well economically, that was. And they were in debt already.

"Pretty big numbers..." he mumbled. "Is there any way we could settle for something smaller? Less unnecessary carriers and to a lower price?"  
The foreigner turned around with an evil grin. "I guess I could schedule a meeting with the other investors and see if we can come back with a smaller alternative in about two weeks. Provided there is anything left of you by then." This conjured up a lot of gasps from the seats surrounding them. Not only that, they were aggravated. They started talking to each other, like they did whenever a delicate topic came up.

What everyone around them was thinking slipped out of the man on the right desk's seat. "It's a blackmail!"

And Mr. Tagore didn't let any time slip away upon hearing this. He instantly turned around and bent towards him. "It's not blackmail, it's business." The crowd was starting to get louder. The cat suddenly looked into several angles upwards and downwards. Peppy checked what he was after and saw he was seeking out the cameras. Then the cat made it's move towards the center of the house.

"People, representatives, calm down. Please listen to what I have to say." He made a gesture with his open hands, moving his palms downwards, trying to push down the representatives' temper. "Seriously? Are you really suddenly betraying your own ideals and principles in the very moment they turn against you? This isn't about a threat or exploitation." He moved from side to side. This seemed to be some sort of short speech. And Peppy wasn't the only one to notice. Flashlights from below the stage revealed that photos were being taken in large numbers. More than in usual sessions of the High Council. "This is business. This is what it means to dedicate oneself to pursue one's own virtue. This is the essence of what you always stood for." Upon the next sentence, he rotated in a full circle, turning his front side and look from camera to camera, while opening up his arms towards everyone. "This is the Cornerian Dream, ladies and gentlemen."

The situation was hopeless. Some people, either in agreement, or in resignation, even clapped their hands. This was their last safe way past the Third Venomian Uprising. They were to choose. Cripple the state by giving up on any hope to restore it financially, or risk the utter destruction of Corneria and the death of all of their dear planet's inhabitants? It was a cruel mind that would deliberatly catch them between a rock and a hard place. Peppy could see the despair in the President's and his right hand's eyes. Through mere nods, they silently agreed to signing the contract. The vote went through the seats of the representatives, and it passed.

While signing, making Mr. Tagore put on a wide smile, unconsciously showing his fangs, the vice president made one last remark. "Not the glorious kind of assistance."

But even here, this man had no problems with talking back at an authority. "Glory lies not with honour, but with money, with power, with victory." Once the three of them had signed the papers, he gladly took them and put them into his suitcase. In one sudden swing he turned towards the entrance. And this time, the right side of his jacket was moved far up enough by the movement to reveal to Peppy that he had a gun hidden on the upper side of his right leg all along.

This last detail of a memory, only now made sense to Peppy, that he had been told that is wasn't actually Glacier Tagore standing before them. His savoring every moment of that day, rubbing the issues he put the Cornerian state into up all of their noses made a lot more sense, if it was to try and lure out, bait, or provoke someone who might have wanted to try and assassinate him.


	8. Easier than expected

_Ok, not much to type about here. Not exactly trying out a lot. Just going along with what was prepared for._

* * *

Chapter 8: Easier than expected

The structure of the ship suggested a big room in the middle, accessible through a corridor that connects the recreational deck with the hangar. Upon finding it, he found the entrance. A wide hatch that would open upon closing in on it. Inside, a wide desk or counter, filled with buttons and triggers filled it's center, and above it a similarly wide but longer panel. Behind it, the room would still extend with some down-leading stairs into an area, enclosed by panels on the walls that showed the ship's surroundings.

Of course, as they weren't exactly at one position, there was nothing to see. Next to the counter, there was an android looking at him, with it's usual lack of a facial expression. "Do you need anything?"

Glacier closed in on the robot. He had seen similar models, but they looked different. "Are you an R.O.B. aircraft manageability unit?"

"Positive."

"You're not directly connected to the ship. Where are your interfaces?"

"Connection interfaces for fixed synchronization to single ships were introduced with the 'Decide' model, built and first sold in ALW 02."

He did think so, but..."What generation are you from then?"

"I am a 'Relocate' from BLW 08."

Good lawn, this thing really was the one ROB the Star Fox team had been using ever since it existed. When used, replaceable machines generally got sorted out after a few years, but this thing was moving towards it's twenties. Must have been a remarkable generation to be able to be kept in such a good shape after so much time. No scratches, no dents, it moved fluently. It was handling the controls flawlessly. They were extremely expensive back then, but obviously worth the money. Glacier's guess as to why they changed that was, because they were often used in conflicts and wars and got too easily destroyed for building them to last long.

"So there are no interfaces even for data transfer?"

The robot took a step back and pointed at the end of the control table on the right side. There is one for data transfer and software maintenance. Feel free to use it if needed."

Ah the monotonous voice of outdated robots. Never gets old. Glacier didn't care what others thought. In his opinion, it maintained a basic amount of entertainment forever. His mind nevertheless went back to what was important, and he moved to the spot the android had shown him.

He detached his comm and held it towards the interface, after preparing the synchronization. After the beeping tone was played, he reattached it to his right arm and proceeded to transferring data for the briefing.

* * *

Upon destroying the last few Prometheans in the section they were in, Amanda turned to Slippy. "Do you really think that guy is secretly plotting something?"

Slip put down his controller, and shuffled, to turn to his wife. "Sure not, if he finds time to think about video games. I really hope Falco's just making a fuss about nothing. I'd really like a rest from scams that seem like work."

Amanda hesitated. But honesty was in any case the best way to go. "Actually, I have a similar feeling about him, too. He's hiding something, and when someone does..."

"...they have a reason for that, yes, yes, we all heard that one often enough." Glacier's voice was coming out of the loudspeaker. Him completing her sentence all of a sudden was slightly unsettling.

She closed her eyes half-way and looked over to the terminal the loudspeaker was attached to, right next to the entrance door. "Uh..how long were you listening?"

"I started at the part about the last 'Larry Crocker' film. You know, 'the Fatal Sanctums' part two."

Amanda eyed Slippy with a very disturbed look, while continuing. "That was right after you left."

"Pretty much. That conversation would have gotten a lot further without these annoying breaks all the time."

This time, even Slippy was getting annoyed. "What are you even doing on the bridge?" He got up and walked up to the terminal. He opened the window for direct bridge footage and saw that sneaky cat standing at the main terminal, doing something. Since the angle was from the opposite side, he couldn't tell, what it was, though.

"What are you doing there?", he asked again.

"Preparing something. And it's about time." Glacier moved to the side and readjusted the loudspeaker system. "Hello? Test, test? Can everyone hear me? We will arrive in about twenty minutes...ROB?"

"19 minutes and 54 seconds precisely."

"...yes, and I'd like to talk about some details before we arrive. It's important. Or maybe 'absolutely essential' would fit better. Please meet up at the bridge of this ship." He looked around on the screen, seemingly checking what the other members were doing. Then he just left.

"What the..." Slippy was about to leave the room, when Amanda got up and asked what was going on. He told her about their escort's recent confusing course of action and left for the corridor, where the culprit was just about to pass through. He even had to watch out, not to run into him, as that cat was right next to Slippy the moment he saw him coming. You really don't hear him moving.

* * *

The bird and the rabbit were on their way, but it appeared, that talking through the loudspeakers didn't suffice to wake up Mr. McCloud. So Glacier had to leave, dodge an incoming frog and look for the room he had seen the fox in, before. When he arrived at the door, the falcon already stood there, apparently knowing exactly what he was up to. "I got this." He pushed Glacier aside, opening the door and walking in. It took Glacier a few moments to realize what Mr. Lombardi was doing. He had a piece of cheese in his hand, that seemed to have been by far outdated. The smell was very, very intense.

The moment he picked up the odor, Fox instantly sat up, squinted his eyes, covered his snout with both hands and screamed. "Argh take it away already! I'm up, I'm up."

That was enough for Falco. He went back to his own unit and put back the cheese, to then walk after the others to the bridge. He would have snubbed the cat again and asked him several things as to what he was even doing on the bridge. But if he were up to something hostile, there, he wouldn't have told everyone where he was. From the looks of it, Peppy was of a similar opinion, while Fox was still waking up. The Toads however looked pretty mad.

When they arrived, they all went past the main terminal to the lower, larger part of the room, so they all easily had space, as the one and a half yards between the wall the entrance was in and the terminal was a little uncomfortable for the five of them to stand. Glacier seemed confused, as the screen actually was only displaying on his side, so Peppy went up, turned around a switch and suddenly, it displayed on both sides.

"Ah thanks. All right. What we are heading for is the orbit of Jorania. Before we arrive on the planet's surface, we'll have to get past a Venomian fleet." Pictures moved into the screen, showing several ships around a blue planet and and one of them showing the angry baboon from below Kitty Cat Parlour. "But, as far as possible and if possible throughout the entire stretch, I'd like you to do exactly what you're not here for and leave them alone. One of them broke the rules by attacking me and forcing me to leave. But I'm pretty sure this isn't going to happen all too often."

Without moving his eyes away from the screen, Falco spoke up: "How are you so sure about that?"

"And that's what it's about. The reason are the contracts between Corneria and Venom made between the begin of the Bowman era and today." The next pictures feature several sessions of the High Council and the Imperial advisory court. One of them even depicted Peppy Hare signing something in his General's uniform. "The Exterior Prosecution Treaty, the one about us, basically leaves us with this: Up until now, only the armies of both nations are allowed to take action outside of Lylat. Other than them, every state mechanism is powerless, and even the armies can only act under a strict set of rules."

Slippy asked: "Why not just use their own law?" An unnecessary question, but nevertheless it would have been possible, too. At least theoretically.  
They saw two planets. One with a crucified dragon with a halo and one with a dragon spitting fire. "Ok. Imagine there are two worlds. One in which dragons are holy, and one on which people didn't even want to believe they exist. But when the sons of Heaven's Edge would spill their own blood, he would come. And his age dawns with fire. But there is one whom he fears. A barbarian from the first of the two worlds." It switched to a bear clad in leather armor and a horned helmet, fighting a dragon in a town covered in snow with a sword and a shield. The bear's mouth was emitting some sort of shockwave. "He slays the dragon and is celebrated by the people of Heaven's Edge. But those of the first world would find out, and want to execute the warrior for his blasphemy. He came from their world, after all, but he was on Heaven's Edge. How should he be prosecuted? According to which planet's law? The answer is simple: To none of both. Instead, both worlds should have agreed on a common law, together, in order to have one that fits the wishes of both sides. To avoid a conflict like the one around the warrior, Corneria and Venom need to agree on every single detail. And even having enough trust to gather up and discuss things takes enough time."

The picture switched back to having Jorania in the background. "Basically, the rules important for us are these: Firstly: An army can attack no third entity (that would be us) unless it is an authorized target. Secondly: Any third entity that would harm an other third entity which is unarmed with firepower, becomes an authorized target if it does not leave the scene. Scene here meaning pretty much the entire Solar system. Thirdly: Once any third entity leaves a scene after making itself an authorized target, loses it's state of being an authorized target. Oh and number four is of course: Any third entity that attacks any ship that belongs to a national army instantly turns into an authorized target, even without being given the chance to flee."

Falco couldn't believe what he was hearing and reading. "So you hired us to escort you past the Venomian fleet but neither we, nor the fleet is supposed to fire?"

"Exactly. You see there is a reason why of all transport units and mercenary teams, it had to be Star Fox and no-one else. And they will know it is you, any moment." They agreed to wait for their arrival, as ROB stated it only took a few more minutes.

Upon arriving and leaving hyperspace, Glacier adjusted the camera to point at him, asking ROB to step aside at the beginning. He had something special in mind. He took a straight stance with both arms hidden behind his back. The walls in the lower part of the bridge displayed the area around the ship. The team turned around to see not quite the background of the previous presentation. There might have been the exact same planet in the background, but it was hard to see, as it was covered by loads of ships floating in between. They covered pretty much everything of what was behind them like a wall.

ROB announced: "Incoming conversation request from the fleet's flagship. The main screen above the terminal flashed up with the video-conference window, showing a red-dyed capuchin. He looked surprised.

"It is you once again, Glacier Tagore."

"Why, hello there, a new face on the other side. How come?"

"I'm Captain Darrick Smith. For the time being, I am admiral until the issue around our old admiral is resolved. I do apologize for his orders."  
Glacier tilted his face with a mischievous grin. "You mean the spontenous shoot-to-kill thing? I guessed some of you Vens have some common sense after all."

"Taunts won't be as effective on me, as they were on our former admiral. He has a trial running against him and won't be assigned to a fleet if he is found guilty. But enough of him. I see you come with a Cornerian assault carrier. How come? Is the budget dropping low?" His voice was calm, and it made it clear that he was very confident of himself.

"You know the profit is still being made over a long term, as long as you can't just come crashing on my ships." He grinned. "No, I'm not just bringing any assault carrier. Please take an exact look on the hull. There should be a special red symbol painted on it somewhere."

The monkey made a gesture towards someone in the background, then looked upwards past the camera. On his face, everyone could see a growing wave of confusion.

Glacier asked ROB to have the camera follow him, and he did so. While talking, he slowly moved to the lower part of the bridge, where all of the Star Fox team were standing. He started putting on a grin, so wide, it seemed you even could see his fangs when he wasn't talking. "Yes, there is only one thing, that gave your dear emperor an inspiration great enough to go through all his efforts of achieving peace. One team that did wonderful things for this galaxy and your home solar system." He stood behind the team. "Star Fox. And they're working for me now."

The monkey was now trembling and had taken up a defensive stance. "Impossible!"

"They know about what your people did to the inhabitants of this world, and they know that what ever we are doing can by far not be as bad as that. Not just that firing at us would mean a clash with Star Fox, but also you cannot rightfully do anything unless something happens on the surface caused by orders from me. I can't just get replaced by some newbie who makes inferior decisions like..."

Smith obviously didn't know what to say. He just wanted the cat to stop and interrupted him. "If things really are like this..." He broke off the conversation.

The cat sighed, while everyone turned to him. "Well that was easier than expected." He just started walking away. "This is going to be expensive. Remaking this scene, bribing archivists for exchanges and everything." Then he turned back to the team, which was just watching the sight of of the Venomian ships slowly opening a path to the planet. He guessed it was somehow based on this aesthetic sense of theirs. He kind of woke them up by talking to them: "Eh I General? Team? There are still some things I'd like to know about this carrier's systems."

Peppy turned to him. "Go ahead then."

"You don't happen to have electonic jamming in one direction or a cone, do you?"


	9. Welcome

The hare shook his head and asked: "What?" But Glacier was already leaving, obviously up to something else.

"Ok, then I have to see to Robert coming in here. When we arrive, please do stay here for a while. We're going to need you for something important. Ok, then there's monkeys waiting, I'll need Aruna for all this. She should have..." He left in a rush, seemingly not even talking to them. Thinking aloud but he was still talking when leaving their range of hearing.

Slippy knew what it was about. After waiting a few seconds, he explained it. "It's jamming from one position in a fixed direction, while the other stays clear. You use it, to send messages to someone, while someone nearby isn't supposed to receive them."

Peppy moaned in an annoyed fashion. "I know, the question was just kind of random."

"Coordinates recieved. Source verified as 'Avalanche Mechanics Incorporated'."

Glacier's face turned up on communication window and on the comms of everyone in the room. "That's us. The destination should be in a large valley. You'll notice when you see it." Then just disappeared right away. He was still listening to everything. Slippy guessed he didn't even notice this wasn't normal.

The Great Fox II accelerated towards the wall of ships. As if opening a solid gate, one of the Venomian carriers slowly moved to their right, filling a gap between two other carriers above it. The ships had a formation that was diagonal to each other, but overlapping, so that this particular part of the orbit became impossible to break through.

The fleet, looking like a huge black wall of bricks, gradually created an opening. As if first one brick would shuffle asside, then two behind it would move, and then three behind that one and so on. And as they did, the wall as a whole started to part, to make sure the Great Fox II would come through unharmed. A fascinating sight, only to make way for something astonishing. They slowly passed through the many ships. Their solid formation made it feel like a ravine, shaped solely for the case of only them passing through.  
And what lied beyond it, slowly but surely came into their line of site. A large blue planet. A bit bigger than Corneria, with usual blue, green and white. But the colours shun in a strength you wouldn't witness in the orbit of Corneria. It astounded them. It seemed like it wasn't just ahead of them, but it's presence was so strong, that it completely engulfed them. Merely seeing it, felt like a part of being on it's surface.

"Entering atmosphere.", ROB announced. They felt the air drag, they felt the acceleration, upon looking at the planet, it was like they felt everything. Even if they weren't supposed to sense it. Clouds moved aside, and sometimes, the Great Fox even moved right through them, to unveil endless landscapes, barely populated at all. Vast acres stretching across otherwise green fields, being the only clearly visible indication, as they flew along the surface from a high distance. After a while, they noticed the ship was increasing it's altitude, until what seemed to be an overdimensional mountain turned out to be the wide range around a valley.

There, the Great Fox turned downwards, heading inside. Within it, there were some woods, some fields growing some big green plant and a gigantic white, octagonal structure with open floors and openings on the outside about as big as the length of the floors. Many windows and large hatches were to see at the outside, along with four wide, extended supporting legs. and several pillars on the bottom side. As they closed in, they saw that there were people and ships on the outside levels. On the wall over the place they were heading to, was a symbol. A capital A with three differently snowflakes of different side forming an arc above it. The symbol was all as the sky and had shadings depicting it's shadow. The object was surrounded by many smaller white ships. With all sorts of small carriages moving from the ground to the pillar.

They could hear the communication window opening for a message again. "Welcome, Star Fox, to the Blizzard." They didn't even turn around. They were still gazing upon the ground below them, along with the object they were about to land on. Obviously it was a space station, but completely without fancy structures or the like. On the outside, it really was just a huge Octagon.

Glacier silently stepped down the stairs. He had prepared everything as far as it was possible. Replacing direct statements with hints to them took a while. But the way he did it, it was unlikely, that the monkeys would know what's what. He had prepared codings for these cases after all. He moved towards the Star Fox team, but they were just standing there, watching the surroundings.  
"Fascinating isn't it? Something about this planet just mesmerizes everyone, instinctively draws their attention."

They were shocked back into reality by that. They all turned around, some shaking their heads. Slippy pulled out some gadget and started measuring something. Presumably looking for a radiation of a sort. But he was to find out there was nothing special of the like. When they all felt the rumble from landing on the platform, Glacier finally gave the signal to start the Blizzard's communication jammers and aim them at the Venomian fleet.

Fox took a step forward. "So what happens now? Are you gonna pay us? I mean it was an escort mission, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but there are still some things to be done."

ROB announced "Entrance hatch open, set is on the way."

Falco was alarmed by this. "You mean some creeps we never met before are inside here already? What are you setting up?"  
Peppy put his hand on Falco's sholder and pulled the aggravated bird back. "Calm down, Falco. He said he has to 'remake the scene' after all. I think it's about this bounty hunter he was talking about before."

Glacier was glad that the General was a lot faster in understanding. "Exactly, Robert and a crew are on the way here, to remake the scene we went through when I was talking to Admiral Smith. Ah, and here they are.

In came some men with electronic equipment, bags of data carriers, pads and what Peppy had first expected to see when thinking of Glacier Tagore. His face was different and he was a little thinner than the real Glacier.

The real one turned to him. "Haay wazzup caaat.", he greeted, while performing some ritualistic hand clap.

And he even answered accordingly: "All ships up in space." He then proceeded to greeting the team. "Hello, so you must be the Star Fox team. Good to see you. Glacier told me you know who I am already." His face turned a little more serious. "I do apologize in case he was getting on your nerves. He always does that. It's a habit of his."

Fox spoke up. "This happened once before?"

"Yes, but last time was worse than here, we actually had to fend off not just his pursuers but the mercenaries that were supposed to guard him, so I do know how bad it can get with him. Please accept our hospitality and relax a little here, once we've done what we're here for."

Slippy still hadn't understood what it was about. "So you're that Robert, eh? What are you doing here again?"  
Robert looked at him in an offended manner, only to then switch to a smile and respond. "We're here to remake you lot meeting Smith. Just with me instead of fatty here."

"I'm doing my best...", came from the other cat next to him.

He turned to ROB and the crew standing in the upper left edge, in position not to be in the picture when it starts. "Everything ready? Ok, I stand here. ROB, would you be so kind to set the camera to follow me?" ROB did so. "Alright. Now Star Fox team, please stand right where you stood - picture please..." On the screen appeared a snapshot, taken from when Glacier was standing behind the team, talking to soon-to-be-Admiral Smith. "exactly the way you stood there. Please fulfill us this one plea."

Confused by the politeness this man was showing, they looked at each other, gave a shrug, and arranged themselves according to the picture.

"Ok, now please stare at the screen, like you did back then. Ok that's it."

And the next thing that happened was literally him saying the exact same things Glacier said before. Obviously, he had received it some time beforehand, since he was capable of reciting everything, word by word. Even mimicking his looks when doing so. It was really becoming footage that could be easily cut to an exact copy of what happened right before their eyes, just a while ago.  
It ended just as quickly as it started. Peppy did ask what this was for, anyway. But the only answer he received was: "That's a long story."

As the crew including Robert left, Star Fox noticed, that the real Glacier had gone too. They were alone. They turned to each other. Peppy raised his head and asked the apparent question. "Well, Fox, Mission accomplished, what do we do next?"

"We did accomplish it, but Glacier didn't lose a word about our payment, so we oughta stick around anyway." He went up, waved towards the exit and bolded his fist while talking. "Let's go already. We got a reward to collect."  
"All right!", Falco cheered and clapped his hands at the fox' newly found resolve.

* * *

Upon leaving the Great Fox II, they found themselves on a wide platform, with different ships all around them and a wide opening along the platform's area. Having the sun directly shining everywhere was surely more comfortable than the enclosed halls in public harbours.  
Peppy shrugged. Despite the view on the stone walls of the clear-aired valley and the light of an early midday sun, he was feeling scared. Scared because he heard a too familiar tockering noise coming towards him. "Arrived, good." Came from behind the Great Fox's opening hatch.

They all turned around to see the source of that noise. For a moment, they didn't know what to think. Slippy and Amanda screamed and held each other, since it seemed the one talking was a one and a huge, thick, hairy, dark brown spider with thick legs and eight differently sized yet symmetrical eyes. The bigger ones forming a trapezoid. It's body reached almost as high as a person and had the proportional width.

Falco took a step back and had drawn his weapon, as he didn't believe what seemed to he happening. So did Fox. But it spoke again, this time right before their very eyes, showing that his mandibles are moving while talking. "I have order show you way you want. Guide you for time visit."

Slippy couldn't hold back being himself. "Geez, what is this thing? It's huge!"

"Slippy!" Peppy had to scold Slippy when he did that, as usual, as that darker tarantula did seem to be the person talking to them after all. And in that case, adressing him as a 'thing' was more than inadequate.

He did have a point, though. It was confusing enough to see a spider of a size never known. But an animal on all fours that yet spoke and wore clothing was unknown to them, let alone walking on twice as many legs. Except for crustaceans from the Kenjo galaxy, none of them had ever seen something like him.

"You are confused of spider looks?" He lifted one of his front legs and gave it a quick, demonstrative look. "No worries, I am not more predator than dog, bird and frogs." It spoke with a throaty voice, and a strong accent, rolled every 'r' and pronounced the 'i' from 'bird' in a weird, o- or u-ish way. He used the leg he had lifted and moved it below his head for a bowing gesture. "My name is Mikhail Bredlev. You may adress me Mikhail. You ask for place in Blizzard and I show you."

Peppy took a deep breath and calmed down, lowering his weapon. He saw that on the tight yet not thin black leather clothing, there were one-handed handguns attached to each of the spider's legs, as well as two bigger ones on it's back, yet it hadn't drawn a single one of them. This made it seem a lot more safe to say he had no hostile intentions indeed.

Fox took similar notes too. He gave the team a look and started asking them what they preferred. "So, if he's gonna show us around, where would we want to go?" He turned to Mikhail. "What places are there anyway?"

"There are hangar, hangar platforms, canteen processing department, transport units, recreational department and rest of usual ship's facilities."

"Well, I'm hungry.", burst out of Slippy.

Amanda agreed with him. "Would we be served food in the canteen?" Fox was about to say something, but kept it, upon seeing a calming wave coming from Peppy.

"Two hours, then food is no longer obtainable for now. And only if I'm there also. You can recieve food as my guest."

Four huge, perfectly round, begging eyes downright assaulted Fox. They hadn't done anything as of yet, but they had spent almost ten hours without eating. They forgot on their journey here after all. And Slippy was right. If they had the chance to get a free meal, why waste it? Fox faced the spider again. "Yeah. Let's head for the canteen."

"I have understand, follow me.", he answered and turned around, moving ahead of them. He was moving pretty quickly, Slippy even asked him to slow down for them. A request that the rest of the team acknowledged.

Despite it talking to them, and it's seemingly friendly intentions, Peppy couldn't help himself but feel a grudge to it, or rather a fear. He remembered this tockering noise from one of the few missions their team actually failed at. The last one they accepted, that was outside of the Lylat system. He remembered the rough shape and this deep loud and fast noise, that, upon looking at this Mr. Bredlev, obviously was a deeper kind of skittering.

They followed him through the opening situated around the platform they were on. Under the golden shine of the sun, revealing all of the valley and a stunning mountainside around it, men and women of all kinds of species were walking back and forth, carrying devices, fixing or making changes to various pieces of aircraft, all landed on the same platform and the neighboring ones that could be seen from the one they were on. This was not just a ship or a carrier. It seemed more like a mobile city. Only with a centered structure, making it a machinery. None of them argued about anything. Merely gave each other orders or exchanged information. Some were shipping large, barely hovering containers, filled with some blue shining ore towards the ships.

The area behind the opening had vast empty areas. It wasn't full of ships, as expected. Most likely, these were the ones outside. In smaller carriages, people were moving even more devices and loads of that ore from place to place. Slippy started asking aloud: "What is it they're transporting around here? These blue stones. They're so clear, it almost seems like they're not reflecting, more like..." He paused.

"Shining? They are. Is unknown but we are sure is either very interesting or important. We already have investors for research project and rights for research on central areas. We suspect is from collapsed ruin. But must have collapsed many centuries ago, or through something very big."

"Wow, you think I'd get the chance to work on that too someday? Or something similar?"

Mikhail stopped in the very instant Slippy uttered that question and turned around. As usual with precision in every leg, unthinkable for a bipedal animal. "Project runs under Avalanche, and working for Avalanche is big decision. You should know more about company before take hasty step. Think a few times before doing that. Some made it without thinking and regretted it."

Slippy gulped. "Okay.", was the only thing he managed to utter under this shock.


	10. Arrogance and Safety

_It's finally going on. Thanks for the recent feedback. And feel free to send more. I will attend to even the smallest criticism eventually. Given it's constructive, that is, of course. I regularly go over older chapters and see smaller mistakes, but sometimes of a hardly believable scale. Whenever you find any while reading, feel free to report them._

* * *

As the lift finally arrived, Glacier was awfully glad to be back in his actual flat at last. Not the small one for hiding on Corneria, but the slightly bigger, more comfortable one. He had the sensor at the entrance terminal scan his eye, then was granted entrance to the much wider corridor leading to much more rooms to his left and right. Even the turrets seemed alright. Comfort, security, everything he could ask for.

While carrying all his bags on the way to his office on the other side of the corridor, he stopped half-way and turned to his right. The lift to his special storage room had a camera watch over the lift and the recording would be triggered if anything was to move inside it. He checked on the terminal at it's side, but there was no movement since he had left. How relieving. It was well hidden, but he was always afraid someone would see through the illusion as well as the fake readings surrounding it. Everyone who works for him goes through extremely high security measures, but you never know if natural curiosity might lead some underestimated mind to uncovering something they're not supposed to know. This was another reason why he never was all too keen on leaving the Blizzard, especially if it's in a hurry.

He proceeded to carrying everything into his office, the doors in front of it sliding open for him and finally put down all of them on the floor around his table. He had to move them to a corner or something before he could start welcoming anyone in his office. He sat down, took a deep breath and turned on his table. Windows opened all over it, depicting recieved messages on different platforms programs, along with the hosting panels for any sort of common communication program.

He turned to his right, opened one of his more rustic pieces of baggage, took a memory unit out and slid it into a slot on the side of his table. Immediately, a separate window opened, automatically extracting data he had stored on it. This was something completely different, he had to work on, another time. In the moment, it was rather time to contact his cousin Aruna, to see if she was there already. But before he could tap her picture, an incoming call flashed up. It was George Graham, male, Cornerian, doctor of industrial management, his portrait depicted a collie. It had grey hair around it's mouth. At least it was capable of sticking by flaws.

He was an applicant for leading the Avalanche division for Sketh. Since he did do a good job compared to other companies of his kind, he had the chance to enter in a high position, but he nevertheless was one of those, who just decided to jump on the bandwagon of a rapidly growing enterprise, taking over one large company after the other.

Most of the competition's leaders deliberately ignored the economic potential the state of technology and law of this galaxy offered. Instead, none of them thought it necessary to expand, to use the money they make to make their company a bigger one. Instead, they would just sit back in their manors and estates, leading a luxurious life, provided by the dozens or hundreds of people working for them.

He was ready to give people a chance to change their minds, once forced to. Graham Electronics was recessing, due to the lack of demand. Lack of demand, because they just couldn't keep up with the competition, if they wanted to get by. Too much of the financial input was pumped into the excess a small amount of people at the top was living in. Financial puffer? Expand? Why? There are no worse times, their companies are so big they can't go bankrupt, right? So wrong. So very wrong. And now they came crawling, bowing, kneeling. Maybe even willing to change something about their life. Hopefully, this one was capable to be brought to the right path.

He turned on the voice manipulation, so that in his recordings, his voice would be replaced by that of Robert. Then, he accepted the call, but only the acoustic part.

"Greetings, Mr. Tagore, if I am not mistaken?" Glacier didn't like the tone that man was putting on. It sounded almost condescending, which was not the tone he was to put on, if he wanted to be below the person he was addressing.

"Good day, Dr. Graham. I believe you're willing to discuss the conditions for your new position, that have been sent to you."

"Yes, exactly. I felt free to have my personal assistant Clough take a look at them. Conditions on the workplace seem partially reasonable, though there is one other topic, that is of a more pressing matter."

"Hm, sad, what are we talking about, exactly?" He knew exactly what they were talking about.

"First it would appear that there was a printing error on the annual payment. It seems as if it were lacking digits, also, the holiday bonuses are not comparable to two or three annual salaries, as they would usually, and there is no compensation."

Yep, he knew, exactly what they were talking about. It was a pity, he didn't get the message. "Could you send me the scanned documents please?" He received them at once. "Well that was quick, thanks." He was fast indeed, the picture came instantly, as if he had scanned it already. He compared it, and the obvious result was visible.

"Nope, everything is right. These are all the right numbers."

Glacier could hear the middle aged man at the other side take a sudden deep breath, and then a pause for a few seconds. Was this too much? "This is blasphemy. How would you expect me to get by like this? Is this a joke?" No it wasn't. It was barely less than what Glacier took for himself. Practically not at all, actually. A few more bottles of water a month, that was all.

"Well, other times, other conditions. As far as I understand, if I were to increase it to numbers that fit your imagination..."

"It is imperative, that..." His voice was very aggravated this time. Not of being annoyed, like Glacier likes it, but of pure ignorance and arrogance. He seemingly couldn't believe he was expected to live by mortal standards.

"I would have to increase them for everyone of your position. As for the compensation: " He paused for a second. "No-one receives a compensation. Why would I hand something like that anyway? All you'd need to do to be rich is to sabotage me then. No-one would actually put a proper amount of effort into their work. Then, at the speed we're expanding at, we would be bankrupt a year later."

"You can't be serious. I won't take this farce any longer..."

That was it. Glacier didn't know what was wrong with that man, but he wasn't acting like an applicant, more like a superior. If at this very moment, he wouldn't grasp how things were, then he wasn't a person worth considering to be given any responsibility. Not to say he didn't even work himself, he had a personal assistant. They were just assistants once, but by now, that word was a mere excuse to have someone else do one's entire own work for close to minimum wage, if the workplace even had a minimum wage that was and to brush the results. He simply interrupted him the same way he had been interrupted himself. He actually shouted at the microphone. "Go with the time, or be left behind, good day, Doctor.", and just broke off the call.

He opened his Blacklist folder and put all files regarding Graham into a folder inside it. This man didn't have the insight to be a part of this. Logical consequence was, that he would try to find a way to stand in Avalanche's way sooner or later. Eventually, Glacier needed to have an idea as to what Graham's last few hours should be like. After a few seconds, he put away that thought. If he was to become a nuisance, then the occasion was to deliver some ideas anyway.

Alright, time for what he was actually after. He removed the voice mod and made the call. And she picked it up. "Glacier?"

"Yes, it's me just wanted to know, you and these colleagues of yours, have you arrived yet?"

"Good you're here, we've been waiting for you."

"Yes, sorry it took so long, I was...kind of distracted, you know these monkeys keep jumping on the road. The usual." They both laughed.

"We'll be up there right now, see ya."

"Bye." Call finished.

All right. Things weren't going so badly after all.

* * *

They entered a hall. A wide and very flat one with many pillars all over it's area. The main dining area was enclosed by white walls with openings on all sides, which bared additional rooms to eat. At the other side of the hall, seeing from the entrance they came through, went a serpentine stretch to walk through with counters for cooked or fried foods, along with buffets and many of the shelves featuring several layers filled with food for self-service towards food of any kind. Meat of all sorts of lesser animals, as well as a wide assortment of plant-based food.

This was unusual to the Star Fox team, as most of the restaurants and diners they used to go to, were on Corneria. Corneria was strongly connected to the outside world, but it was nevertheless actually the homeworld of most breeds of dogs. Dogs only, therefore mainly inhabited by them. Cornerians were carnivores. If you didn't specifically look for a restaurant themed to apply to some omnivorous culture, all you got was a small salad, which wasn't in large stock, so you often didn't get anything. For Peppy, preparing his meals, taking the ingredients from exotic shops or visiting Venomian-themed restaurants was the only way to go.

But this was a ship filled with people of all sorts of species. While walking towards the start of the path, crossing past tables filled with people eating and talking aloud, some discussing seemingly serious matters, some just engaging in casual talk and joking, Peppy saw the path had whole counters with several layers, solely for fruits, vegetables and herbs. And someone coming from a door behind the stretch, presumably an entrance to the kitchen just went to one of them to fill it up. They even had food in stock.

At the start, with a firm distance from all the tables stood a closed gate with an armed tiger guarding it and a terminal at the side. As the spider and the team were closing in on it, the tiger lifted his arm and stretched it out with an open hand. "Stop, cards please."  
"Is Mikhail Bredlev with guests." Mikhail stopped, moving one if his front legs towards a part of his clothing. While he was fidgeting at a bag, Peppy noticed he actually had smaller joints on the end of his leg, like fingers. He was already wondering how a spider was supposed to hold a gun. Let alone pull a trigger. Mikhail took out a small card from his bag and handed it to the tiger. The tiger slid it into the terminal. A beeping sound rang, and the tiger opened the gate.

The path really fit everyone's taste. An astonished "Woah" came from Slippy. Usual meat for Fox and Falco, various smaller insectoid meat for the Toads and here, even Peppy was able to choose what to eat. They've been to normal cafeterias, to Venomian restaurants, Aquan restaurants, Titanian, Gromian, Jerethian, everything. It didn't have as much for each individual taste, but it nevertheless seemed like a... "This is an Everythingian Restaurant."

Falco rolled his eyes. "Sure...everything...ian." He didn't want to think about it more than necessary and simply shook his head before resuming to asking one of the cooks at the counters to fry his assortment. He was to spice it later. He was really getting into having this meal. And from the looks of the others, he wasn't the only one.

Once each one was done gathering a tray filled with something you would actually expect from their respective species to eat, other than adapting to what's there, they gathered at the end, and had Fox ask their host to enable them to pass through the gate outside. Mikhail went to the counter, told the saleswoman his name and stated the rest of them eating as his guests, weighed all of the trays one after another, and out of a terminal at the side of the exit, the card he had given away at the start came back. He then proceeded to one of the alternate dining areas at the side.

Fox took a good look at the people around him at that time. Someone who just left the self-service area after them, sat down on a table nearby. This was the moment to pay particularly much attention. But there was no reason to be suspicious. The husky did eat the same meat he gathered right before Fox' eyes. So it either wasn't poisoned, or each and every one around them used an antidote for what ever poison there might be. None of them believed it was a trap, but you always liked to be absolutely sure. On the other hand, had it been, they wouldn't have needed to poison them for that. They were gone so deep into this spaceship, Avalanche could have captured Star Fox any time they wanted.

Falco pointed at the right corner opposite of the entrance. A wide table was free for them to occupy there. Mikhail waited for the team to take the places on the sittee that went along the corner, so that he could sit on the other side. He wouldn't have fitted between the sittee and the table anyway. They all sat down, the Toads thanked him for waiting, and they were ready to eat. But they didn't yet. All gave Fox a certain look, signaling him they were waiting for him to come up with something they were all thinking. "Listen, Mikhail, thank you for your hospitality."

"Is self-understanding."

Fox tore off a piece from his steak and handed it towards him. "Did you ever try any of this?"

Mikhail took it with one of his front legs and ate it up. "Yes, you mammals eat this much. But I prefer arthropods. More strong animals. Have more protein and more cross consistency." He pointed at his own tray, bearing three plates filled with palm-sized insects, a lobster and half a chicken.

Fox and Peppy felt disgusted. They were the only ones though. Falco didn't mind and the Toads had put some insectoids on their own trays. They were pretty surprised at how quickly their host took everything he came with apart and just horked them down. "Uhm, everything okay?", Slippy asked.

Mikhail looked up to him, saw his confused look and twitched. "Oh, you mean this? I have little appetite. I just hunted for wildlife on surface hour ago. So I eat slow for space in stomach." This was him being slow? Before anyone really got started, he was done and stood up from the stool he had placed below himself. "I have important thing to do soon. You get along yourselves?" He already was about to go.

Falco spoke up. "Wait up, we don't know this place. How are we getting back?"

Mikhail stopped to point at the nearest pillar. "On pillars are terminals for general things like navigation. There, you find inormation if you need." With this, he just left. They all waited, attentively looking towards all exits, to see if he was coming back. But he wasn't. It seemed he didn't need to survey them, or not any more at least.


	11. Curiosity

At last, they had some time for themselves. They could start eating at a relaxed speed and discuss, what their next steps were to be.

Fox decided to start it off with a summary of their possibilities. He finished his steak, put knife and fork away and cleared his throat. "Alright everyone, let's think about our next step. First up is: What do we want? Would you guys consider taking offers coming from this Glacier or this...Blizzard...?"

"Avalanche. I believe Blizzard is only the name for this ship or structure we're in."

"Thank you. So do we, or do we not? Peppy?"

"Well there are two things that clearly speak for taking up more work from them. The first one is, that we aren't in a position to choose right now. Although if we move back to outside of Lylat, that might change again."

He was cut off by Slippy. "I'm sure about that. Old customers from outside never stopped asking if we thought of extending to their systems again. Actually, they've gotten all flashy ever since we decided to stay in Lylat."

Or rather Fox decided for us to stay in Lylat, Falco thought. "Hmph."

They all faced Falco. "You want to say something?"

"He's not good company, this 'Glacier'. Besides, it does seem a bit funny. We were never told what exactly they're doing here, that the monkeys are all up their sleeve. I don't buy that slavery garbage at all. Peppy, tell them. You had a lot to do with Venom too, didn't ya?"

"He is right in that matter. Slavery is definitely taboo in the empire by now. It does feel like something shady would be going on. But even if so, this would cause the second pro for him. If he has something really stingy going on, he did his best, not to get us involved with it. I mean what did he tell us about anything? Nothing. And he even found a way to get through without us having to lay hand on the Venomian fleet. He could have done things differently. And he sent someone to show us around."

Falco made a move towards Peppy and slammed his forefinger against the table. "Before I agree to stick with this guy, I wanna know what he's up to. I don't wanna be dragged to some assignment and have to mid-work break it off and retreat without payment like last time. Besides, that Don Carle fella might be up to getting back at us anyway. If the same happens, like with him, we'd be in big trouble."

Fox pulled his agitated friend back into his seat and made a calming gesture towards everyone. "All right, all right, you both have reasonable arguments. You know what? This is what we'll do. It seems like we have free access to the ship, otherwise, that spider guy wouldn't have agreed to show us around if asked. So why don't we use that to check if we find something out as to what they're exactly doing here. Peppy, you and Amanda head to the surface. I'm pretty sure I saw a village in this valley, so this place is definitely inhabited. If you don't see anything special, ask them what Avalanche is doing here. Falco and Slippy, you come with me. We'll check out the ship and see if we can get to Glacier and talk about possible work afterwards. Everyone keep your comms on, it saves us a lot of time."

He was happy to be met with approval.

"All right!"

"Let's go."

"Then let's head off."

Slippy went right to what he would do at such a point and took off the pad that was attached to his overall, did something on it, smashed it against the wall and kept pressing it on it. Falco asked in confusion: "What are you doing there?"

"I'm using my self-made sonar mapping app. Definitely easier to navigate through than with all these terminals. I can carry this baby around and use the visor for navigation." He pressed a button on his headgear, which extended a blue-ish visor around his left eye. "Now we can walk around on our own, and won't get lost."

They agreed, finished up, disposed their trays and left in opposite directions.

* * *

The way back to the Great Fox was pretty easy, as while going to the canteen, Peppy noticed there were lines all over the ways meant to pass through by foot, featuring an arrow from time to time, with one of the colours the lines were painted in. On the one pointing in the direction he and Amanda were going to, the baige one, it read "HG08", presumably Hangar number eight. They simply needed to follow it and gradually came back to the outer platform.

The sun was still right above them, and there were just as many busy people around as before. When they entered, they were kind of surprised, though. A leopard in grey labour clothes, carrying a heavy amount of various things from equipment, to electronic pieces, came through, almost bumping into both of them, managed to avoid that, and apologized to them.

"What is going on here?"

The leopard put down what he was carrying around, wiped his forehead and took a deep breath. "You from Star Fox? I gotta see some ID."

Peppy and Amanda just pulled out their cards, seeing their names and the photos matching the people in front of him seemed like it was enough. He showed an ID of his own, looked legitimate, he was of this company's Routine Repairs division. "Ok, we're just fixing some urgent issues. For starters, the synthesizers for the life support were showing signs of decay. Mighta broken eventually, and leaving them at that could be fatal in case you were stuck somewhere for a month or two. Then, we're fixing up the pipes next to the vents to prevent poisonous gases from leaking out in the hangar and..."

"Ok, I get the gist of it, and we're thankful. But we'd prefer to do things our way. Do finish up what ever you started and can't break off, but put back to normal or leave what you can't get done within half an hour. Understood?"

The worker nodded and took his equipment to the other side. Peppy asked ROB to open the bigger exit and proceeded to heading to the hangar. He also contacted the others and asked them to remember to check if the Great Fox was still there in a while.

Amanda obviously felt offended by these workers still being there. "Pretty rude to just intrude our ship and go out of their way and do stuff with it. How are we sure they're not fiddling everything?"

"Calm down, Routine Repairs are a standardized separate unit in private ships' crews I know where they're trained, this all they ever do. And they don't consider anything different. They're just payed for their time of repairing ships. Which ones doesn't matter. Nevertheless, I'd like it to be vacant, when we're back."

"Still, it's not like we invited anyone." They opened the door to the old bridge, entered, and started up the machine. The hatch was already open, so they merely needed to pass through. Upon leaving the Great Fox and the landing platforms of the Blizzard, Peppy's senses were once again flooded by the many details the valley ahead of him had to offer. The fields, the rock formations, the many edges of the mountains that were marked by the verges of the sunlight shining on the sides that pointed to the sun. The river you could see leading past in the distant area outside.

"We should head for the village, Mr. Hare. We might find our best chances to ask around there."

But there also was a lot unveiling itself, when entering the shadows of the valley. The vast area right below the Blizzard emitted a sensation of force, as if it made an invisible herald call out and declare the power of them, who descend from it. Upon reaching the ground, Peppy's eyesight finally allowed him to take a more precise look at the structures at the other side of the valley. They weren't tents. No, something else. Huts. But they weren't only the usual wood- or straw-made huts.

They were different. Upon passing by above them, they gained diversity. Some were indeed made of wood or straw, but some weren't. Some were made of wooden planks, some were made of stone. And, surrounded by stone huts and even some made of bricks, as if not from the same place as the rest, stood one, not only at it's base but as a whole made of a solid metal, glinting in the faint sunlight passing through between the spiky surface of the mountain and the daunting shadow of the Blizzard.

A bit further on the outside, he found a landing zone just outside of the village. It wasn't all too full, though. The other ships were somewhere else. He landed it safely and opened the door for them to leave. He locked it and surveyed the surroundings. There were no streets, only dirt tracks that led through the spacial ways between the huts. Around them, everything that wasn't part of the area that obviously belonged to the huts, everything was well-grown with grass, and foreign flowers and herbs. When giving them a closer look though, it was all there, but it was losing colour. The life forms themselves were there, but each one's life was fading.

Most likely due to the shadow casting away many hours of light the plants used to have. And indeed, from down here, especially where the village was, it was almost dawning. Things were starting to make foreshadowing impression. Peppy told Amanda about the iron hut at the centre of the village and off they went.

Something was off though. Something was missing. They walked through the peaceful scenery. Almost not peaceful, but silent. Here and there, they saw a lesser cow or goat strapped to a post, standing on all fours, curiously looking at the foreign faces. One of them even got all worked up and tried to move towards them. "Hey there little fella. Where are people gone?" He slowly walked towards it and stroked it along the head and neck, to calm it down. It just bleated and looked away, after it got it's grip, and moved back to the others it was tied up with.

After a while, they saw a male normal buffalo, a real indigenous man, on two hooves, pulling an empty cart out of the village. "Hey, wait up!" Peppy spurted along and tried to get the big guy to stop. It didn't work. He just grunted and moved on. Amanda was staying quiet, as she obviously wanted anything but to mess with the bull, but Peppy wasn't sure if this was the only one around."Listen, I know you're busy, but I'm...new here and wanted to know what's all up around here?"

"I'm just a worker. Why don't you go to the center? People there have time for talk."

"Wait, where is everyone?" The bull ignored it and was moving faster.

"Leave me do my work." The bull just paced up and left. Hard to understand and blunt. These were the best. The best potential for conflicts. Peppy was hoping the bull was right. He continued to move through the outskirts of the buffalo village. While looking around, he even saw a small child curiously gazing through the window, but hiding itself away the moment it noticed Peppy was looking at him.

When the huts were finally getting more solid, he saw people sitting inside and around them. All of them were either old or children. He was getting closer to what the buffalo of before was talking about. Finally, one large square. The ground was just earth as usual, but it was big and surrounded by huts all pointing towards it. There, there were a lot more people. Amanda decided to head towards it and asked all of them. "Um, excuse me. Would you be so kind as to tell us where all the people are? I mean there must be others."

Some just looked at others with a visible incomprehension. Then one of them, an old cow in very used formerly colour-filled clothing stepped out and pointed at a place even further at the centre. "Go there and ask elder Ngumo. If you really come with good intentions, he will tell you anything you want to know." She went to Peppy and led her in the direction the stranger had showed her. She kept asking around for elder Ngumo and finally was led to the only straw hut at the heart of the village. It was bigger than the usual hut, but it was nevertheless made of straw, surrounded by stone. Perhaps as a sort of a testament to a low status, or a dishonored status.

Peppy saw the man and immediately knew it was the one he was looking for. He was very thickly clad, compared to everyone else around and his clothing bore pieces and patches of all colours. As did the necklaces around his neck. He went straight to him, bowed slightly and spoke to him: "Greetings, elder Ngumo, I presume?"

"That is correct. You seem different to the other strangers from the stars. Tell me what you are here for." The old buffalo nodded.

"I'm from a team of warriors from afar and wish to ask, what has happened here. All your bovine friends here are either children, elderly, or gone. The only one was moving a cart, and refused to talk. The light and life are fading from this place. What happened?"

The old native didn't move an inch. "An unstoppable wave of snow happened. Come inside, before chief Kithingi sees you."

* * *

They were walking quickly, almost too quickly for Slippy to keep an eye on the map and keep up at the same time.

"Fox, what are we looking for, anyway?"

"Storage rooms. This used to be the best way. If you want to find out what someone's really doing, check the storage rooms."

"Alright, then we're on the right way. We reach this level's storage department if we go left next time."

But wherever they went, just as what they saw in the corridors between the storage departments, all they could find were the blue shining ore, standard equipment and supplies. After spending ages of searching, moving from level to level and walking along all the storage rooms of the ship, they finally came across something, a few levels above. It was already a part of the research department, but they found some of it in an empty room.

Slippy took his pad and made some scans to examine it. It was blue-ish too, but darker, and absolutely smooth. It featured two surfaces that were thinner, flat and transparent. "It looks like a piece of a console, but it's of a substance that looks a lot like this blue stuff that's all around the ship. It's incomplete though.

Falco was getting really mad and smashed his foot against a wall. "This is nothing like what we're looking for. It's exactly what that spider told us. It. Exactly. Is." Kicking a table over and over again. Fox calmed Falco down, and they went back to where they started to check up if the Great Fox was ok.

They took the lift down, were led by Slippy past the usual set of corridors and the Hangar bay, and finally came across the Great Fox, only to find it empty and at it's place. Everything was there. And they checked on everything. All their stuff, the ship's systems were intact, frankly speaking even more intact than they left them, in Slippy's opinion, the Arwings, the controls, even the surveillance. Everything was fine.


	12. The results of curiosity

Peppy and Amanda entered and sat down. "So why, who is this Chief Kithingi?"

"He was one of our workers once. But when our chief Gatimu wanted to move upon the path of violence with the strangers, Kithingi challenged him to a duel and beat him. He then agreed to obey to the strangers and recieved a shining hut in exchange."

"Ah, hence the metal hut."

"Yes."

"So, you're obeying, what does that mean? Has it always been like this? I mean before this huge ship landed here."

"Ship? You mean the white giant gazing upon our land? Not from the start. Before you rush to quick opinions, you should know it wasn't always the way it was here. I will tell you the tale of a lazy cat."

"Beware the white cat! Beware the darkness that lies within!", shouted another old bull from a primitive bed behind them.

Amanda went up to him. He was a very old man, but something seemed to be terribly wrong with him. He had wounds on his arms, they looked like he caused them himself. His clothing was torn everywhere and his neclace was hanging half-way out of his mouth and his right horn was completely broken off. "What cat? The white one? Did it hurt you?"

But it didn't seem like the stranger was hearing her, or realizing shes talking to him. He neither struggled against her trying to move him to get up, nor did he go along with it. He just kept blankly staring at the ceiling with wide open eyes, yet an empty gaze in his face. "Beware what's inside! Stay away from the darkness. The beast, the fires of hatred, they are not the true threat, it is the hollow one. The heart of the heart of the darkness is the true fiend. The fiend, the devourer of all souls."

She turned to Ngumo. "What's wrong with him?"

"He is our former chief Gatimu, and the reason we are loyal to Kithingi. Other than the monkeys of a long time ago, I was still a young bull back then, the cat's minions do not harm us physically. Never once did they fire at us. They always seemed to be people of peace. They were different, they were better, and had better methods, yet they were no saints themselves. They never laid hand on us, but they have their own ways."

"Once Gatimu was defeated, the white tigers came and brought him into a tent on the ground, where the lazy cat faced him one last time. I sneaked my way around to see what they were doing. But they weren't doing anything. It was the cat, the spider and Gatimu. The tigers were only standing guard. Gatimu was sleeping, while the cat and the spider seemed to be sitting on the ground, meditating. When the tigers returned Gatimu, he was like this."

"Protect all those, who have not yet gazed into the abyss, it scars you. It makes you one with the void." With this, Gatimu finally turned away from them, hopefully to sleep.

"Once, they came in smaller numbers. They weren't an empire or a company or however you call your realms in the stars. It was a group of travelers. Friends even. They knew each other, and they knew us. They traded with us. Devices filled with an infinite force of sorcery, that allowed us to prepare and harvest much larger fields and also gave us various substances that had our crops grow faster and more bountifully. We had to triple the amount of Silos for our village, only to partially keep what we grow in storage. In exchange, they wanted a part of our crops. They even ordered us to grow certain alien plants they gave us the seeds for, much like the empire did. But what is happening now, only started with the alluring call of the creators."

"The creators?"

"The first are people who lived in long past. The strangers said you call them the "First". The lazy cat also gave them another name. He said they looked like 'Sapians'."

"Hm...you're talking about the time of legend."

"In legend, we were here to guard the land of our creators along with the spirits. They left long ago. Not for the stars, like the cattle of the north, but in a compeletely different way."

Peppy didn't want a repeat of the time of legends. He knew that story well enough. "Yes yes yes, let's please get to what's going on here."

But the buffalo wasn't intending to skip this bit at all. "I am only telling what is necessary for here. So. Once, a group of adventurers came to our home, they said something about a subwave single that lured them here." He most likely meant a signal.

"And in our souls, we could feel the same thing. They showed us a small entrance into a cave, that led deeper and deeper below the mountain. The walls were shining blue, and after a long and troublesome journey, we finally found something else than just the insides of a cave. A shrine of the creators. The strangers called it a 'terminal'. It's upper and lower surface shun in a thousand colours, showing tiny pictures that seemed to be in a fixed order. They said it was 'still working' and the hare brought her 'books', wooden blocks with thin layers inside to figure it's meaning."

"They told us, their 'first' would be what we refer to their 'creators' and wanted to translate it. But when the hare put on her glasses, made movements on the lower surface, and the pictures changed their order."

A deep shiver ran down Peppy's spine. A rabbit, that was interested in the time of legend, who used classical books when working? It couldn't be. Could it? It might have been a Hare, instead of just a hare. "Tell me about the rabbit. How does she look, did she introduce herself?"

"The hare didn't talk to me much. She said she was an athropogist. And that she was trying to find out about the first. She was gray like you and had double visor like you." An anthropologist. A rabbit with glasses, even withe same fur colour. It couldn't be, could it? Was his little girl really involved in all this? He grabbed the elder's sholders and did what he could to shake him.  
"Where is she? Where did she go?"

"She left long ago, said she would take this to university for studying. They sent a small vessel to the stars with her and the shrine and she wasn't here ever since. "

She left to study it? As far as Peppy recalled, she was giving lectures as of now. "Wait, when did this all happen? When did she leave?"

"She left long ago, back after they found and brought forth the shrine." He looked at a watch that was lying on the ground. "One of the things they gave us was this. They said it shows the time of Corneria. It was two and a half months ago. On this world of yours at least."

With this, Peppy was relieved again. He has just talked to her a month ago, so she was fine. He'd better ask her about this next time he had the chance though.

"Ok, back to what this led to. We are not alone here, sometimes, not just from the stars, but from the earth around us come traders, almost every day once. And soon the word of the shrine got around outside. And it drew the attention of the Scaled. A tribe of theirs believed we still had the shrine and threatened to attack us. The wild beasts that they are, after understanding we didn't have it, then realized they could attack us to feed on us anyway."

"But the travelers were prepared for this. Just like it was with the monkeys, their weapons wielded powerful sorcery, even breaking through the scales of the Lumi tribe. In combat, they showed the prowess that they had, even when in small numbers, these particular warriors were powerful. Each one did his own part in the battle for our people. And once it was over, we offered to help them with their discoveries."

"They wished to harvest as much of the magical blue stone as possible. It seemed the curiosity of you strangers is without limits. You wanted to know everything about it so badly, you strengthened the caves and kept digging out rocks from them at the same time. But I doubt that it's results will prove as bountiful as you hope. It is easy to see that the sorcery of the creators is far beyond yours.  
But we were blind to see what was gradually happening. We agreed to help them, and did so, but more and more, the bidding of the strangers, turned into orders. They never laid hands on us, but we were terrified by seeing what they did to the Lumi. Eventually, our chieftain had the courage to speak of rejecting them. To stop doing as they say, but this was the chance for young Kithingi to assume the place he always wished for."

"So until this day, we work for them, all that are of age and not too weak to work without hurting themselves are to work either in the mines or in the fields. Now, they're controlling us, but always bear in mind, that they might have noticed the change just as little as we initially did. Remember it only started with this small group of adventurers. The lazy cat, the graceful cat, the wolf of heart, the wolf of mind, the friendly rabbit, the well-armed hawk, the deadly spider and the blue vixen."

* * *

"It's all ok. Let's go talk to the cat and see where our payment is." Fox was finally back to taking the initiative unasked.  
"Yeah. Slippy, take us the fastest way to that Glacier dude."

And so he did. Went inwards along the platform's inner hangar area and made a first unusual turn. Fox and Falco got a funny feeling about where they were going, but when asking Slippy, he just told them he was absolutely sure this was the way they were supposed to go. He was talking about a lift that, according to his map, directly led to something that looked like an apartment, that actually was an appartment, other than the one-room sleeping decks. And if it was what Slippy described, then it also seemed to Falco and Fox that this was what they were looking for.

But he was leading them not along the lines but from one backside corner to another. The area was as wide and high as ever. So wide actually, you could have flown a fighter through there if necessary. Maybe he hardly even noticed, since he was so fixed to his pad and his visor. But it seemed pretty much like they were nowhere. No big storage halls, no inner hangar areas. They were in the middle of nowhere. When they finally reached a dead end, Slippy confidently said: "Here we are."

But they weren't anywhere. It was just a wall and at it's side the same kind of terminal there was everywhere.  
"You might wanna check up on that again."

Slippy took note of what Fox was trying to tell him, and got more and more confused. "Huh...this can't be. There's supposed to be a small room and a lift here. A thin lift, but it's nevertheless there." He touched the wall with his hand, as if he couldn't believe it was actually there. "Hm." He moved to the terminal and checked the map on there. And according to the public map, there was nothing, just like it seemed to Fox and Falco in the first place.

"Then let's just go and take a real way."

Slippy just turned around to him. "You don't understand. The public map and mine are different. Mine was made from a sonar image of the ship. This is a prepared map. Someone's hiding something here."

"Well why didn't we check up on that? I mean when we were actually looking for exactly this." Was Falco being serious?  
"This ship is kinda big you know. Besides, this room isn't, you can't store anything in large amounts in there. It's just about more than enough for people to be in there." He left the map in the terminal and tried something else. He looked up the files of the map and and opened the commands files and looked for something.

He was absolutely convinced that his pad was right and that there was a room behind that wall. Therefore this wall was actually a gate. And it was too big to open it by hand and it had no kind of grip to hold it, so it had to be possible to open it through some command. And the most likely place to do this from was the terminal right next to it, as it was the nearest thing to look for.  
You could select the wall as something of it's own in the map, and to most it would just seem like a personal choice of theprogrammer, but Slippy knew there was a reason to this kind of thing. He opened one file in a text form to view it's basic code and looked for something. He wasn't doing this the first time, so he knew exactly what kind of thing he as looking for. A variable that didn't seem to be assigned to the map or a specific known command.

"We're wasting our time here." Falco was being pretty impatient."

This time, it was Fox that kept him patient. "Bear with him now, I think he's really on to something." It was a good thing this was so far in a corner, partly even on the way here there was not a single member of the personnel.

After a while of searching, Slippy finally found what he was looking for. The empty variable. He pulled out a data carrier he had gotten from the SEB in one of his assignments over a year ago and inserted it, to install the regularly updated 'special data' from it. It installed itself past any locks or security mechanisms, disabled the ones surrounding the variable he aimed it at and was to deinstall itself without a trace afterwards. He really didn't know how it got past everything so easily or how it managed to keep being up to date. Upon checking where the empty variable led to, it eventually did lead to the very wall he was looking at. The rest was easy.

"Aaaand open." He presented to them the wall that was actually a gate.

He pulled out the memory unit, the gate opened and a female voice greeted: "Welcome to specimen chamber number 53, Professor Islington." Figuring out who that was could wait.

Falco was impressed, and moved inside along with Fox. It was indeed not a storage facility, at least not a normal one. In terms of it's measures it was a normal room, most likely for people to move in, but there wasn't particularly much space for that inside. All over it, there were glass cylinders attached to the floor containing a green liquid and...people. In each one there was a person. It was hard to tell, since theiy wore a helmet, but there was definitely a person floating in each one of these cylinders. They moved further to the inside of it. On each of them was a screen attached displaying things that looked like biological data and life signs. They were alive. And they looked around, all of them were alive. But they didn't move. They were obviously unconscious or sleeping. And upon exactly looking at them, they were of different species, of everything, they just all were bipedal and all were all blue.

Falco looked away upon realizing this. "Such a sick, sick scumbag! He's collecting blue people. I bet that's also why he asked me if I dye my feathers. I guess these people are all naturally blue, thats why their dye isn't wearing off."

Fox was hardly even listening he was too stunned at something he found. It couldn't be could it? The way the fur looked, the stature, the thin snout, this face, this was a female Cerinian. And it looked exactly like Krystal. He fell back into the dark place his mind always was when thinking of her. When grieving over what wonderful times they had had, and how she betrayed him, after he did the only right thing to protect her. How he missed to talk to her, to touch her, how he missed her very presence. He never really got to shake off the never-ending despair about how the person he considered the most delicate and kind one in the universe turned out to be so very, very cruel.


	13. Doubts and confrontations

"Fox?" Falco noticed his friend being awfully silent for quite a while and now was breathing loudly and quickly. "Fox!" Slippy hurried to Fox too, and then they both saw the reason for the silence and the terrified look on their canine friend's face.

"This can't be, could it? That face! It just looks like..." Slippy shushed him, before he could finish his sentence. It was bad enough as it was.

"No, remember back on Kew. We met another one that looked just like her too. Maybe all Cerinian women have that face."  
"Then they'd be the only species of this galaxy I know of in terms of that."

"Still possible, quick. Let's get him away from this thing." They both grabbed Fox, each one held one arm and pulled him a way, that Slippy suggested. It was the left side of the room, the one with the elevator he saw on his map.

By the time they arrived and rested for a few seconds, Fox' finally ceased to hyperventilate. Falco wanted to be sure and slapped his face. "Come to, Fox, you can't just pass out now. There's still a little talk to have with a certain cat."

Fox shook his head and got up, it took a while, but he was back. "I'm fine, let's move on."

But Falco and Slippy weren't blind, he was far away from fine. "We can't let you have half a heart attack, every time you see a Cerinian. We gotta do something about this."

"No, seriously, I'm okay. I just needed to recollect myself. It was a bit of a shock. Maybe I should have ano..." He was moving towards the cylinder containing said vixen, but his friends pulled him away.

"Listen. Right now, we have something else to do. We can have another look on our way back. Slippy, is that the Lift to the creepy cat's apartment?"

"Positive." He opened it, but it wasn't particularly wide. Actually, it was barely enough for one person, considering it's of Slippy's width. "Guys, you'll have to go up there on your own. I'll check if there are any patrols coming or something and see if I can buy time. People here are not gonna like seeing us hanging out in a room they might not even know it exists."

There was just enough space inside the lift for Falco and Fox to both squash themselves in. Before closing the door, Fox told Slippy to keep his comm. on so the could keep contact just in case. They then closed the door and pushed the button for the only other level assigned to this lift.

Slippy on the other hand, had to stick to where they were. He was stuck on this area, and theoretically, someone might have come to check up on this area any moment. The best thing he thought of was to tell Fox and Falco that he was closing the gate and that they needed to tell him, when they were on their way back, to have him open it.

Having the hidden room be hidden again relieved Slippy again. Now to look around. He hurried out of this corner area, letting his pad record the path he took, to find back quickly, if necessary, and was soon back in the inner Hangar area.

Always only moving around the inside part of Hangar 08 seemded kinda dull, if you knew there were seven others. He thought it was best to take a look in one of the others. Luckily, the exit of the area that led to the hidden storage room was close to a connection between Hangar 08 and 07. So he went to take a look, through another wide and high passageway. Most likely, so you could even pass through with fighters and smaller ships. For the most part, everything looked the same on the other side.

When looking around more closely, he saw something else though. Something he had least expected here and in this moment.

* * *

It wasn't moving very fast. Whatever reason it did that for. But while moving up, they heard something coming from Fox' comm. Peppy's face showed up. He was in the Great Fox II's hangar, and behind him stood Amanda. "Fox, can you talk?"

"Right now, we can. Everything okay over there?"

"Yeah, we had a little talk with a local village elder. Listen. Avalanche is running an excavation of some sort and they're making the people here work for them as slaves. They dig out this blue shining ore out of the mountain and send it off for transportation to the Blizzard. Where are you right now?"

"We're on our way up to Glacier. Do they force them by hurting them if they don't do as they say?"

"Actually, the elder is convinced that they're far from doing any of the like. The villagers don't even really condemn them for what they're doing. They even seem to value their acquaintance somehow. So no weapons. Not a single shot. I know where you were going with this. The rules that regulate affairs outside of Lylat, but this doesn't work. You're hoping to resolve this and see if you can earn a small extra fee from the Venomian fleet, right?"

"Yeah. But maybe we can find a way to use that anyway. If we can somehow use the rules the cat listed up earlier against them..."

"Then the Venomian fleet would be authorized to join in. It would force Avalanche to retreat. Great idea, Fox. That's just the way your father would go by things. Except if it was about the Venomians, of course."

The lift arrived. Behind a round window, two panels slid to the side, unveiling a wall with a wooden shelf in front of it. "Ok, we arrived. That was it for now. Wish me luck. I'll see what I can do."

"Remember, Smith will even be thankful if you find a way to stop this, without getting ourselves into trouble. It seemed he spent a lot of time with these indigenous people. See if you can talk some conscience into him."

"All right bye."

* * *

Fox then slowly opened the door and came into a long corridor, with doors on both sides, like in the apartment below the questionable club on Corneria. Only here it was different. The corridor was wider and a lot longer. As a result, there were a lot more rooms, so you could tell from seeing there were more doors. The walls weren't painted in a grim tone either, instead with a white-greenish colour, while on both sides on the corners between the walls, the floor and the ceiling, there were light-blue decorative patterns showing the shape of snowflakes evenly in a row.

They slowly moved inside, looking around. On one end of the corridor was just a white wall with a small screen at the left side. The lift they came in through was in the exact middle. On the other side, at the very end was a partially open door. They figured it'd be best to move towards it. The reason why they stayed so quiet after entering the apartment, was because they heard voices from behind the door at the distant end of the corridor. They were very far away though, so they couldn't eavesdrop on them just yet.

But before they were half-way near the door, they found something that woke their curiosity. Even Falco took a closer look at that, even though he usually wasn't interested in useless stuff. It was an empty spot on the wall, without a cupboard or a door, but with ten pictures hanging above it. Nine of them formed a square and showed differently clad male and female tigers. One on each picture. But they were obviously tigers of imagination, as some of them had four or more arms, some of them weren't white with black stripes, but blue with black stripes, and one of them had four faces.

"Are these like tiger mutants or something?" Falco had no understanding for things that went beyond any sort of one hundred percent pragmatic life style.

"They're Grahan symbols of virtue. They used to be some sort of charm on Grah. Each one stands for one or two virtues. The one down there doesn't make sense to me though." He had read about this thing in some magazine a while back.

Below the nine impossible beings was a photo, not a painting, of an old polar bear with glasses in a gemmed grey suit sitting on a black sittee sipping a glass of red wine. The bottle was on an elegant glass table on his left side. The background was filled with pompous furniture and pictures in golden frames. Below his picture, on a small platform lied a closed box. Fox, resisting Falco's try to prevent him from that, opened it and found an old spinnex watch, covered in silver. On it's backside, there was something engraved, and he had to hold it very close to his eye to read it. "In dedication to the one who couldn't resist, but nevertheless strived to end it for all his life - Marcus Bergesen"

He placed it back in the box. Sentimental stuff like this didn't make him seem like someone who enslaves people or abducts them for the sole sake of a hobby. Not if giving it second thoughts at least. Next up was getting closer to that door at the end to hear what was going on. They were sneaking, while carefully checking the floor and the walls for something that might set off an alarm. There were cylindrical plate-shaped objects on the ceiling, but none of their movements seemed to make them do anything. Gradually they started understanding a few words.

"You could get rid of some of it though.", said a female voice in a teasing manner.

"I do try to get some exercise then and then, but I just constantly have something more important to do. Let's get back to you, why are you traveling around with those guys anyway? What about the whole 'birthright' thing? Your family wouldn't be particularly fond to know what business you're trying to enter here." This was Glacier, though he was talking differently to the way they knew him. He was actually being annoyed, or given the context, maybe he was even actually caring for that woman.

"Ryan is going to inherit something between most and everything, so no need to care about that."

"It's not about Song Electronics, it's about you. This is dangerous. Being a mercenary puts your life at risk. If you don't know what you're doing, you will die. And that applies to every moment and every thing that you do separately."

"Life is short. And with the danger comes the fun."

Then they heard a very familiar voice purr deeply. "There could be even more sorts of fun in it for you if you wanted."

* * *

Glacier bent sideways toward Wolf and held his hand between him and Panther as if this would isolate them. He then whispered into their leader's ear: "Is that guy in heat or something?"

* * *

Their suspicions were confirmed with the next voice. It was that of Wolf O'Donnell. "No, he's always like that." No-one could mistake that deep, powerful voice.

The sounds of Glacier sighing and slapping his palm around his face were both loud enough for them to hear. But nevertheless the casual talk, what was Star Wolf doing here? "Why? Why have that kind of guy here - you know what? I don't even want to know. Back to what's important."

And back to what they were listening for.

"This is the payment you're receiving for this - if - you do it. It's not more, because you're not more than a diversion. Keep them from attacking my fleet. I don't care how. Shoot at them, talk with them, dance with them, whatever works. Just buy us some time."  
Wolf growled, but agreed after a few seconds. Falco seemed to take this as the moment to do something incredibly stupid. He went in and started talking. "Hey guys, how's conspiring against us working our for ya."

Leon immediately drew his blaster, took a step back and hissed at the sudden intruder. "Talking back to the wrong people, birdie boy." But he was soon to put it right back.

"Put the gun away, look." Glacier pointed at the ceiling. More of these round plates had been there initially, but they had extended them to turrets that were all pointing at Leon.

The room was not as big as expected. it had doors on the left and right side, but was otherwise enclosed by walls with only little space left. There was a more spacious area on the left side crammed with all sorts of bags and backpacks. The same ones he was carrying when entering and leaving the Great Fox. Between Panther and Leon stood a young white tigress, slightly shorter than Glacier, in a black leather jacket and grey casual clothes below it.

The calm cat folded his arms and asked: "Let me guess, you actually only wanted to collect your payment and then leave, and then you happened to eavesdrop on us? I can't imagine you're here alone anyway, where's Fox McCloud?"

Fox stepped in and made Glacier listen to him with a halting gesture as he was about to talk again. "Listen, we know what's going on here. Everything. The blue ore, the slavery, and we know about the blue people."

The last thing struck fear into the heart of Glacier. He was confused, but he was also getting a lot louder than one would expect form him. "How do you...how did you even get in there? There are only three people in the gala...no in the whole universe that can enable someone to get in here. And I am one of them. Which one betrayed me? Please tell me it was Islington."

"I'm afraid that's beyond me. Slippy opened it. But we did hear a greeting for a Professor Islington when coming in."

The cat just waved that away. "No, that's normal, but...no...you know about..." He was overwhelmed, took a step back. He was thinking. He held his head with his right hand and started scratching on the surface.

Fox used the opportunity that came with this silence. "Listen, what's happening on the surface, this isn't right. Peppy told me all about it. These people don't even despise you for what you're doing. Not even that. They don't deserve to be treated as slaves. You can't keep that going on."

"I never intended to. I'm just delaying the end for as long as possible." He went towards one of the walls that was also a screen showing an angle looking down the valley." What they're going through right now is utmost freedom compared to what things were like here, twenty years ago. Elder Ngumo told me everything. The Venomians abused this planet. And it's inhabitants. In any thinkable way and even in unthinkable ones. And once I'm gone, I'm not sure if I can ever take it back."

"These aren't the same Venomians. They have laws against these things. They have contracts to keep with Corneria. Things are gonna work out eventually."

"You are right about that, without a doubt. But I nevertheless want as much of this ore as possible. The more we can ship with the one trip we have, the better. And the Joranians, don't worry about them. They have more food stored than they could possibly think of using up for a whole year and they're still growing more."

"And the blue people in the tanks? What gives? Why that?" Fox was being more concerned about that matter. Wolf was curious to hear about that too.

"That's a long story..no. Two long stories. Both of them are complicated."

"Then what are you doing with them? Is that some sort of mutagenic fluid they're swimming in? Is it that? Experiments for that Professor?"

Glacier shrugged. He seemed shocked about this very idea. "What? No, nothing like that. In short, the tanks are for preserving. They have about the same purpose as Cryo chambers, but Cryo chambers always have this slight risk of the one inside dying of a cryoshock when set free. These tanks work differently. They don't prevent aging in total, but they slow it down to an extent that makes it seem like it would stop. The helmets just prevent mental deterioration. Long story, who knows, maybe we'll meet again, and I'll find time to explain. But I'm not the expert on this anyway."

"So are these people in there in their own will?"

This answer took a bit longer until it came. Fox couldn't even see his face this time. "Let's just say some people are too valuable to be exposed to the dangers of their lives and some people can only be persuaded if confronted with something that confuses them. Something terrifying that confuses them."

So he did keep people imprisoned against their will. With this, he snapped. "That's it." He left and dragged Falco along.

"Wait wait wait...don't let them take the lift on the left side! Run!" Glacier commanded to the Star Wolf team, which immediately ran off to catch up with their old competitors.


	14. Chases and chances

Upon arriving, Fox instantly pulled the door open with everything he had and held it open for Falco to pass through, while encouraging him to move faster. After entering it, he started it at once, as there was no time. Upon starting to move down, he already saw the Wolf arriving and growling through the window, but they had made it. It was locked.

* * *

Wolf smashed his fist against the door. "Dang it!" Along with the rest of Star Wolf arriving one by one, Glacier arrived last, doing something with his comm.

"Listen, we can't take that lift, go on, to the main lift!"

They then ran to the other end of the apartment. Glacier quickly had the entrance door open and the main lift move up at once. "What about that storage room? Why didn't we know of that?"

The confused cat looked up. "What? You never wondered what was behind that lift?" He lifted a shoulder. "Well you're not the only ones who don't. Quite confusing if you ask me. Nevertheless, no time to tell that story."

He proceeded to calling Mikhail. "You have new order?"

"Yes, long story, hurry to my storage unit and close the outer gate."

"You mean one with 'personal storage'?" He was already moving, as Glacier couldn't see his hideous face any more, but instead a very wobbly slideshow of walls his octapedal friend was obviously running past.

"Yes exactly that one. You have what you need to do that. Just close it before anyone sees it."  
"Have understood."

He then broke off the call and turned back to Star Wolf. "Ok guys, you know what to do I presume."

They all nodded. But Wolf pointed his finger at Glacier and moved it menacingly close. "But once we have time, you better explain to us what's going on."

"Ok. Please just remember, not to fire unnecessary shots. Not a single one may reach the Venomian fleet. Just make sure the Star Fox team is forced to focus on something else than probably attacking my ships. If mine have to fire back, it's open a gate and leave for me. Your payment will, no matter what was before, depend on your performance. And Aruna." He turned to the annoyed tigress. "If I have to tell uncle Howard, that anything has happened to his daughter, you know I'll bring along heads, don't you?"

She waved him off. "Yes, yes."

"I'm not sure if you do. If I find out Mr. Womanizer over here..." He pointed at Panther. "...got too close to you, no matter if you wanted it or not, it applies to him, too. Do you both understand?"

Aruna nodded. Panther was about to utter one of his strongly self-confident catch-phrases when he was interrupted by Wolf's elbow being plunged into his back, which tended to be his way of telling someone to stop talking immediately. Panther then decided to just nod too.

This calmed the cat down. "Thank you. If you wouldn't mind, I have an announcement to make. He faced back at his comm turning on the voice manipulation and turned on the public channel to adress everything around him. Everything within the Blizzard itself, the ships in the Blizzard, the ships on the Blizzard and those around it.

* * *

While watching the angry Wolf slowly slide upwards until he was completely removed from sight, Falco shook his head and tried to get hold of what Fox was on to. "Fox, what's gotten into you? What are we doing right now?"

"We know everything we wanna know now. But I don't want to leave with every step I make being watched."

Falco couldn't believe what he was hearing and shook his friend, hoping it would help somehow. "So you make them chase us? You gone completely crazy now?"

Fox simply calmed him down. "Look. They were just gonna walk us out of this ship staight to the Great Fox. Maybe even keep us here for a while so they could keep gathering more of this ore, before leaving. I'd rather do one more thing and speed their venture up a little bit, to satisfy the monkeys, than risk Star Wolf holding us captive here.

"So what 'more thing' are you thinking of?" He didn't like where this was going.

"Freeing the Cerinian."

He knew it. "Are you out of your mind? You can't look at her for a second without...you know..."

"I know, but I can cope with it now that I know what's coming. Either way, I wanna know more about them. And if I free her, maybe I can partly redeem letting Krystal die."

Falco didn't like this at all. On the other hand, if this one had some dark sides that Fox didn't like he could feel not as bad about Krystal. Or maybe he would even take a liking of her. That might cheer him up after all. In the end, maybe freeing her wasn't such a bad idea after all. Being a fox, she might even be a natural talent at flying, too.

Fox contacted Slippy. "Slippy! Star Wolf is.." He hesitated.

"I know.", replied a smiling Slippy sitting in what looked an awful lot like a Wolfen's cockpit.

"Uh, whatever, come to the room with the glass tanks as fast as possible. Ju..." Their conference was interrupted by an automatically overlayed announcement, coming in without footage.

"Attention, please prepare for departure immediately. Complete whatever shipment can be prepared within the next five minutes and gather everything that can be brought in quickly. I repeat, prepare for departure immediately." After it ended, it started off right away again.

"Fox, how are you even planning on doing this?"

"Glacier said the tanks keep the people inside them absolutely safe. Even if the tanks break, they're just unconscious without any sort of damage. All we need to do is get her out of it and carry her to the Great Fox. That's why Slippy could give us a hand."

"But what if these Avalanche guys catch us?"

"He said no-one's supposed to know about that place. Besides, I have a hunch that they won't attack us either way. Just keep moving and hold on tight to her, then they won't even take her, simply because they risk injuring us or her."

Slippy arrived in time to pick them up, whatever they needed picking up for. He landed the Wolfen in front of said meeting point, took out his blaster and fried the controls. Right afterwards, the lift's door opened and Fox and Falco hurried outside. They headed straight towards the blue vixen's tank, shot it open without hitting the woman inside and Fox caught her, when it cracked and all the water came flushing out.

"C'mon, Slip! Help us get her to the Great Fox!", Falco screamed.

Slippy was still slightly confused. He didn't think doing that was a good idea. Still dazzled, he watched his colleagues getting the helmet off the female captive. Fox heaved her up his shoulders and shrugged. Her touch felt exactly the same as Krystal's. Exactly like - he couldn't stumble down that road now. He had to keep it together. Even if the pain remained. It was the only chance of redemption.

When running past the Wolfen, Falco contacted Peppy. "Peppy? Peppy! Do not let anyone inside the Great Fox, we're leaving and we're on the run. We got company too."

"Got it. Slides and doors remain shut." But Falco wasn't listening, foor he had something far more urgent to hear. The tockering. The foreboding tockering. And it was right above them.

Mikhail drew four blasters and aimed at all of them. "Stay right there." None of them was moving. They wanted to, but having an extremely fast one-and-a-half yards big spider standing right above them, able to just drop down on them any moment while pointing enough guns at them to be absolutely sure to hit one, even if they'd be lucky at dodging was too much of a delicate predicament.  
They did start moving aside to avoid having him drop on top of them, but then his next words sent a paralizing shiver down their spine. "What are you planning on doing with blue fox woman?"

Fox caught himself. Running wouldn't have been clever at that point. He thought to be safe on one hand, but on the other, Avalanche was planning to leave shortly anyway, so they might attack them either way. But as long as he kept the Cerinian on his back, the spider would try to avoid shooting at him. "These people don't deserve this, do they? What did they do? What did she do?" Maybe persuading him was a way to go about it.

"Holding someone captive is not always to help captor, but one who is held." He kept aiming one of his guns at Fox. He even put back one of them to check if the blaster he was aiming at Fox was unlocked.

"I want to set free at least this one."

"You going to do same to her as with other blue fox woman who joined Star Wolf and died?" So he knew about Krystal? On second thought, that was obvious if they were acquainted with Star Wolf. The next step was to explain himself. How to do that now?

Fox shrugged. Mikhail was being fixed on him with his wide-open, starry eyes. "Think, McCloud. Think what you did to her. You want it to end same way yet again? You want to have killed two of almost-extinct species?"

The spider did seem to be concerned about that particular woman he was carrying. Fox thought back of the times he had with Krystal. About the mistakes he made. She was no trained pilot. And when it came down to each one's individual skill, she didn't seem any better than Slippy, to be frank. She did learn quickly, but particularly after the Aparoid invasion, he knew the life of a mercenary was too dangerous for her. Maybe this was wrong. Maybe the trust he had in her, that made him let her join the second she left Dinosaur Planet was what she liked about him. What kept her on the right path. At least a better one than the one Star Wolf led her to. He shouldn't make this mistake this time. He was convinced, he would look after this Cerinian, find out more about their people and make sure she would be safe around him or left to go if she wanted to.

"Hm, it seems you have understood. Maybe is good for both of them if she is free for a while." With these words, he just went on to crawling past them. What was that last thing about?

No time to think about that. They took the unexpected chance they got and kept moving to the Great Fox.

* * *

An incoming call showed up. Upon taking it, the fearsome face of Mikhail turned up once again. Glacier shrugged every time he saw these wide-open eyes and these hairy mandibles. At least if it was so sudden. "Did you close it?"

"Yes, but broken Wolfen is inside too. Star Wolf won't be able to leave."

"Hm, so it's one. Only one?"

"Yes, only one."

"Ok." He already had an idea as to how he was going to catch to mice with one claw. He turned to Wolf. "I have a substitute - " Wolf was putting on his pokerface, but he was waggling his tail. " - temporary substitute for you." As if he'd just give away presents like that. "The rest proceeds as planned to entering your Wolfens, I and Wolf take another route. If Star Fox runs at full speed, they'll be long airborne when your Wolfens lift off. I need you as a security measure though. Just in case."

The lift was about to arrive. All of them were preparing themselves to speed off. After Leon, Panther and Aruna ran off, Glacier and Wolf turned left, in the exact opposite direction. Before they could run too far in the wide hallways though, Glacier turned to a wall, pressed a button on a small keyboard, and a part of the wall slid open, revealing a barely lit and both vertically and horizontally narrow corridor with dark grey walls and a conveyor belt. When passing by it's start, Glacier hit a large red button and it started moving.

This did speed them up a lot. But, the feline lost his breath half the way.

"Seriously?"

"It's not like I'm doing this every day you know."

After a few seconds of walking, they proceeded to running the last bit, until the exit door led them to an outer corner of... "Hangar 07? That's where the Wolfens are. Why not take the rest along here, too?"

"The rest doesn't need to be introduced to what's coming."

"How does that prevent them from leaving faster?" This cat was either extremely stupid or just plain insane.

"Long story, here we are." They arrived at an area occupied by a white fighter, Wolf hadn't seen before. It had eight wings, which were the widest in the very back, and formed a pointy nose at the front. Laser cannons were attached to the outer wings of the lower half. Below the nose was a cylindrical contraption with a bowl-shaped structure at the front. The G-diffuser was somewhere in the wings, presumably. "Behold, the mobile fighter of the future. The 'Ice Pick'"

"So this is basically like a Wolfen, right? I take it, that thing at the front is the smart-bomb launcher."

Glacier walked past him to the contraption on the nose. "Nope, smart-bombs are only deployable if you have it installed in the upper wings. This right here is the amplifier for the charged laser. Apart from amplifying it, it also channels it and gives it a completely different shape and use. Instead of a larger, homing and detonating light particle, it emits a thin, fixed ray. Doesn't sound particularly useful, but it is. Since it penetrates just about anything. Name it, any alloy for the hulls of bigger ships or any kind of energy shield. Not as reliable and easy to aim with, but extremely practical for combat against bigger ships."

Didn't sound very useful to Wolf. How was this supposed to help in dogfights? "That's somewhat awful. Can't I go with a standard charged one?" Glacier asked the nearby technician, if he could show Wolf, how to disable the amplifier. They approached the cockpit and he pointed at a small brown lever, right next to what usually was the one for readying smart bombs.

* * *

The Cerinian was too heavy for Fox to carry all the way to the Great Fox. He almost fell over inbetween almost waking her up. So for the final bit, he gave her to Slippy. Slippy was a frog after all. If he didn't have the legs to mortise large objects quickly, then who did? Upon arriving, Falco contacted Peppy with his comm again.

"It's us, open up!"

"I can see that."

The slide up into the Great Fox II opened and closed once the three of them had made it through.

"ROB, let's leave."

They felt the accelerations from outside, while hurrying through the corridors of the personnel deck and into one of the guestrooms to put down the foreign woman on the bed. She was already waking up, but apparently in distress. Fox stayed close and tried to calm her down. "It's okay. You're safe. What did the cat do to you?"

She faced him. "You mean Glacier?"

"You know him?"

"Kind of do, but you never know. The first thing he said to me, was 'at least you don't have tentacles'.", she whispered into his ear with an increasingly fading voice, before falling asleep again.

He found her look while sleeping so adorable. He couldn't wait to wake her up again once this was all over and ask close to everything about her. And spending time with her generally. He would tell her everything about his life she didn't know and take her to any place she wante...

"Fox, come on, what happened to your let's-help-monkeys thing?" Falco dragged him back into reality again and pulled him out of the room. "We still got work to do." He was right. Fox nodded and accompanied him and Slippy to the bridge.

Peppy and Amanda were waiting, while ROB was still steering the Great Fox out of the slowly moving fleet of white ships. Their movements somehow had nothing to do with the Great Fox, they neither responded to the team nearing to one of them, nor did they fire or try to close in on them themselves.

"At last, you're here, took you long to come here. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, things got tough, but we came through unharmed. Ok, ROB, please try to gain some distance to the Blizzard."

"How far are you preferring to be?", the robot asked.

Fox put on a mischievous smile. In this very moment, being a fox came in handy, as he knew exactly what to do, to get the white ships off this planet. "A little further than far enough to deploy a missile. Falco, you read conventional books, you happen to have paper and pens, too?"

Usually, he wouldn't take that kind of question too well, as it's usually to accuse someone of being old-fashioned. But here, that didn't fit into the context at all. "Yea, but don't you dare..." He pointed at Fox.

"It's okay, I just need it right now."

Falco led him out and back into his room. He searched through one of his shelves on the wall, until he found a block of paper, and then handed it to Fox, along with a pen from his drawer.

"Thanks." Fox took them and started writing a letter.

"Fox, what's all this about?" A reasonable question, considering he was acting pretty random since they entered the Great Fox.  
"I'm using Glacier's own ways against him. Even if he has a mole among the monkeys, he won't know everything." Falco lifted his head and closed his eyes, indicating his understanding.

With the letter still on the block, they went back to the bridge. Everyone was looking at him, still as confused as ever. Except for Falco, he was increasingly hoping the old Fox really had come back, as these kinds of instructions and this confident face, every bit of it: this was the way he used to act, when he had a plan.


	15. Why would he do that

_Took myself a winter break, especially since the last bit of the first arc is particularly delicate. But here it is. Sorry for the disappointment, in case people checked up on this in the last two weeks._

* * *

Once they had passed the mountains above the valley, they stopped. Even in the distance, the Blizzard was still in plain sight. At least from time to time, since the fog in-between made it hard to see.

"Alright. Follow me, everybody." While they were leaving, heading for the hangar, Fox handed Peppy the block he had taken from Falco's room. "Peppy, take this to Captain Smith. Do not let anyone than him read it. I wanna avoid the risk of a mole as far as possible. Everyone else, we'll get into our Arwings and wait around the Great Fox."

They got into five of their Arwings and left through the permanently-open fighter passages.

"Peppy."

"Yes?"

"As soon as you and the Venomians have left the jamming field, you contact me right away."

"One last thing. Don't be too hasty with telling on our last employer. He might be forgiving. You never know." These were the words Peppy left the scene with.

"I know, I never intended to."

A few seconds passed.

"So eh, Fox what happens now?" Only Falco said it out loud, but everyone was thinking it.

"For now, nothing. We wait a bit, to give Peppy some time. We need to get this right. We have only one try on this one."

* * *

Leaving the surface left a funny sensation behind. This soothing feeling Peppy had gotten used to was fading.  
When he arrived in the orbit, the Venomians weren't very responsive. Actually, even upon trying to force a connection, the screen kept flickering. This jamming field was thorough indeed, just as he knew it from several occasions. The only thing he could do was slowly fly along the fleet and take a look. He picked the biggest ship he could see and decided to slowly move towards it. A fast approach was more likely to be taken as an attack, as they were working against the Venomians just his positive surprise, the Hangar bay remained open, allowing his Arwing to pass through. Workers and soldiers came from all sides, once he had landed.

Other than the easy access to their bay, the reception was just as heartwarming as expected. They surrounded him with guns pointed at his head at all times. Once he had gotten out, a grim-looking bonobo pushed his way past one of the soldiers. He wore a brown officer's uniform which was already decorated with unusually many badges for an ordinary officer. The naked skin of his right upper mouth bore a burn scar that went all the way from the mouth past his nose almost reaching his eye.

"Let me through." He stopped, in order to meet Peppy with a respectful stance. "General Peppy Hare. Pretty sad conditions for me to finally meet you." He went towards him and offered his hand for a hand shake. "A pleasure to meet you. Officer Stanley Green from the Imperial Delta fleet. I presume your presence comes with a good reason. Our crew will be quite displeased to see you here after the circumstances under which you passed by us last time."

Peppy laughed. "Of course. I have a message for Captain...Admiral...Smith? What rank does he have right now anyway?" At once, the officer sent one of the armed soldiers off, telling him to get admiral Smith.

They proceeded to walk past the increasingly opening circle of armed soldiers and were heading for one of the exits, leaving the open Arwing behind. Peppy didn't mind though, they were with the imperial fleet after all. Not common scum. Green spoke on. "I'm afraid we'll have to order him to recieve it in person. Any form of communication is pointless right now. We can broadcast signals, but anything within the jamming field Avalanche set up after you arrived on the surface is incapable of recieving any sort of message."

They were moving through some side deck, judging from what the people in the rooms at both sides were doing partly an engineering unit and a training unit, but it seemed Green knew exactly where they were heading. "I presume this is the message for the admiral?" He pointed at the block Peppy kept holding inwards, so the message would be covered by his jacket.

"Yeah, I would be most pleased to hand it to him in person."

"It wouldn't make a difference, he has to come here anyway." They turned to the right, proceeding further to the center of the ship and entered a large staircase. Peppy could never get used to the Venomian thing for stairs. Everyone in the galaxy had lifts to save space and for comfort, but the Venomians were keen on having one big room for stairs only in each cruiser or larger ship. They were in one side case first, but it was a detour, since what they were heading for was the reception area, mostly used for talking to ambassadors or people of similar roles. And it was right behind the bridge. Which meant it was at the very top. Why did he not keep that in mind, when he agreed to being the one to talk to Smith?

When he finally made it, making his host wait for him several times because he lost his breath, he was relieved to be able to take a seat on one of their comfortable leather settees and took a deep breath. A crew member approached him, offering him a collection of beverages. "Drink?" But Peppy wasn't interested. He just needed a few seconds to catch his breath again.

What was it with these Venomians and their stairs? But he knew the answer exactly. Back in the past, monkeys, no matter which species of monkey, or in their case, race, were all known for exceeding in battle and warfare. They had a code, not a law, but rather a guideline to their lifestyle, which among other things, dictated that they must honor their ancestors by building their surroundings alike to them. Of course they couldn't build ships, completely imitating stone cities. But their way of living to it, was keeping this one kind of component alike. Stairs. Their ships did have lifts, of course. But it was accustomed not to use them whenever possible.

It didn't take long, until he got to see a familiar face again. "General Peppy Hare. What makes you show up on my fleet after what you did last time I saw you?" Not as polite as the officer that met him in the hangar, that was for sure.

"Our mission was to deliver Mr. Tagore to his fleet. This is done, so we decided to take up a new job voluntarily and clean up this mess of yours."

Smith maintained his stance. "And you just assume we would want you to do that? How does one Cornerian assault carrier change the whole picture? We still can't move a muscle, otherwise they would leave."

Peppy stood up and handed him the block with the handwritten letter. "We know, and I need you to read this. This is why I'm here."

"Gimme that." The capuchin took it with a grunt, gave Peppy the cold shoulder and read it, holding it with both hands. Peppy slowly moved around to have a look at his face. The more of it Smith read, the more of his angry look was fading. He was now calm and his voice had actually taken on a friendly tone. "This is actually not bad." He folded the letter together and kept it in his hand, while giving Peppy the block it was on back.

With a determined look he stated his standing to the offer. "I'm in on this. I wanna know if it works. Return to your team. Before I can make my move, it will take some time. We need to pass on orders in person from ship to ship."

Peppy met the persuaded monkey's opinion with his thanks, and proceeded to moving back to his Arwing. They parted ways, when Smith went to the bridge to issue some first orders, while Peppy went for the stairs. The way back was easy to find, and when he arrived in the hangar, some of the soldiers were gone. The rest kept standing guard, even when he had closed the hatch and was lifting off. Obviously, the Venomians met them with very mixed feelings.

* * *

Some time had passed. Falco had lost track of how much. He couldn't stand just staring at the white ships randomly changing their positions in a speed that made them seem not to do so at all. "Fox, let's get started already! What's the next thing we do after waiting."

"Guess you're right. Let's move on. ROB?"

"Yes?"

"Put a lock on one of the ships in the vale. Any one works."

"Target acquired."

A few seconds of silence passed. Falco couldn't believe they were waiting again. "Something gonna happen now or what?"

"Stay cool, I need to be sure they had time to notice. And...fire!"

A missile hatch on the right side of the Great Fox opened, making way for one of their rockets. Since the Great Fox was facing the valley with it's front side, the homing projectile had to take a long detour to have itself go for it's target at the speed it was moving at. Right below the Arwings of the Toads it sped after taking it's turn, heading for the white ships in the far distance.

And then exactly what Fox expected to happen, occurred. It was shot down on the way. "Missile lost. Target remained 100% intact.", ROB reported.

And in came the fighters he was waiting to take out before they could face Avalanche. Of course, the first face to show up on the proximity communication was that of Wolf. But he didn't have the smile Fox was waiting for. He took a deep sigh. "Can't let you do that, Star Fox."

At once everyone burst out in irritation and incomprehension. Even Wolf's colleagues.

"Aw, come on!"

"Was this really necessary?"

"You gotta be kidding me."

"This was really inappropriate, Wolf." The last one's face was new. It was the tigress from Glacier's apartment.  
After the complaints subsided, Wolf apologized. "Sorry, our client promised to give us a small bonus if I say that."

A flickering screen popped up on the communications window, making way for Robert's voice to talk. "Yes, so it is."

* * *

Robert took his finger of the hotkey for transmitting and turned to the widely grinning cat sitting on the gray swivel chair next to him and gave him an annoyed look. "They're right, you know. Did you really have to do that?"

Glacier just bent toward him and made his usual unnecessary gestures accompanying his every word. "Oh, come on. Look into my eyes and tell me you wouldn't have done the same."

In eventual agreement, Robert dangled his head left and right. "Nah, you're right. The opportunity was obvious. You might just be right this one time."

* * *

Star Wolf finally arrived at the scene, but something was different. They were five, and one of their fighters was not a Wolfen.  
Leon greeted them anew. "Nuisances aside, your scorched feathers all back again? Then I'll burn them with the rest of you right now - tee hee hee!" And one of the Wolfens headed straight towards Falco's Arwing with open fire, forcing him to turn away and getting Leon back on his tail."

When the rest arrived, each one headed for one of the opposing team's fighters. The white pointy one was the one that pursued Fox. "Are you the tiger girl from before?"

But it was Wolf's face that showed up. "The Wolfen you ruined was mine, not hers."

Slippy had to smirk. "Yeah, I knew that."

As if she was addressed, Star Wolf's new member spoke up. "I believe you were talking to me. Even if not, my name is Aruna Song, and I will perform well, even against the famous Star Fox team."

Right then, one of her shots hit Slippy's wing. "Woah, that was fast." He had to speed up to have less problems dodging this new acquaintance's barrage. She obviously wasn't very keen on using the lock, as you'd expect. No need to try and reflect her fire.  
After missing him what felt like a few hundred times, Aruna got annoyed. "Come on...hold still, Froggie."

"It's Slippy."

Amanda calmed him before he could go on. "Don't let her distract you." Right before taking a radical turn upwards to escape an incoming Smart bomb, which would hit a peak instead.

Everyone waited. Whenever a woman said something for the first time since last meeting her, there was someone who usually commented on it, mostly ignoring what she was talking about and instead trying to come on to her. But there was only silence. Wolf interrupted it. "Panther?"

"Hm?"

"She's a woman you know."

"I don't do amphibians. Mammals only. Sorry lady."

Amanda didn't even answer.

Fox couldn't follow Slippy's and his pursuer's movements, but he did guess it would be something like that. Somehow just outsmarting the team they would meet in battle on a regular basis would have taken far too long. Especially if there was an alternative. An inexperienced enemy pilot, whose elimination would allow him to outnumber Star Wolf. More frequent charged lasers and more area to be covered in regular shots makes it much easier to actually hit an enemy fighter.

So all he had to do, was keep Wolf at bay and at the same time flank the one behind Slippy. He used the markings on the hud of his front window, indicating which of his allies was which to tell where Slippy was. If the new one was behind him. It was easy to get to her.

And there was something else playing into Fox' hands. Wolf wasn't being the ferocious hunter he usually was. It almost seemed like he wasn't even really trying to shoot him down. Time to get himself some time to get a hold of that new girl. "Say Wolf, how'd you get a replacement so quickly. And such a fine one, too."

"'Let's just stay', 'it's a long story'." He responded, laughing.

The flickering picture showed up again. "Attention. Do not exaggerate on this." And then closed itself again.

But before Wolf could keep an eye on his target, Fox had slipped away already. Slipped his way to Slippy. She was being fast, but Slippy saw him coming and started flying in a curve. Fox charged his laser, waiting for Slippy to get in position. What they were doing was a basic maneuver, but it might just work.

Slippy sped past the left side of a peak, so his pursuer was about to get right between it and Fox. When she arrived in the necessary distance, Fox quickly put a lock on her and fired the charged projectile, forcing her to barrel roll to her left to avoid crashing into the rocky terrain on her right, moving towards him, while he kept firing basic shots right after releasing the bigger projectile. He covered her Wolfen in a volley of basic shots. He was pretty sure he had gotten through her shield and hit something several times. Exactly as planned. Not much to expect from the newcomer. Soon, one would be gone and then there would be three.

By then, Wolf had realized and caught up. Fox couldn't keep shooting down his colleagues' opponents, as Wolf seemed more intent to land hits this time. He had to rely on his team here. "Everyone, the upper left hull of their new one is damaged. We can for..."  
"Lalalalalalalala" Aruna tried to interrupt him, but didn't succeed at preventing Fox from mentioning the crucial detail.

"Is that so?", Amanda thought. She knew this was the opportunity she waited for to do something after shaking off Roseman behind her. She dropped her altitude, boosted, tilted her arwing to the left to a radical degree, completely turning around the direction she was flying in at once, which had her just escape a smart-bomb explosion, started by Panther to pick up on her being so close to the ground.

As she covered the area around Aruna in a rain of laser particles, it got increasingly hard for her to dodge them and aim for Slippy's Arwing at the same part. Accelerating, breaking, taking riskily radical turns, nothing got rid of her, she even lost the frog. Completely. She didn't know where to look to see him.

Slippy hoped Amanda would get along with the simultaneous chasing and being chased better than is former pursuer did. He flew through a curved canyon, he had to to slip out of Amanda's sight and have a chance to use one of his bits of home-made software to briefly reset Aruna's targeting software, deleting the data on him including his position in the process.

When he arrived back in the battlefield, the first fighter he saw was Wolf's white fighter. Hard to tell why it had such a simple shape. Like a cone, but not a complete cone, only hinted by the arrangement of it's wings. However, thinking about Wolf was not the best thing to do. Instead, he thought it more likely to use the surprise on their newcomer. She was being forced to her movements all the time. If he could cover the places she flew to, the areas Amanda wasn't, he was sure to hit her.

He didn't have eye contact, but she did show up on the screen. Left-right-left-right-accelerating, breaking, simple patterns. Simple enough. He rose up, high enough to see the entire area and pushed the nose back down. His wife wasn't just randomly dodging and firing charged shots. She had it under control.

"This is for my honey.", she grunted, when she launched one of her Smart Bombs, having Aruna dodge it with almost a full ninety degrees turn.

But the direction she was taking. This was much more than just a randomly motivated attack. This was his cue. The new girl was flying through the same canyon Slippy just had passed. Amanda was keeping an eye on his position all along. And Slippy was about to miss the moment his wife was playing at. He quickly sped downwards in the opposite direction. He only had one shot, and he wasn't the team's best one at this. To be sure, he announced his part. "Up."

"Down!" Her responding to 'up' with 'down' indicated that their subtle method of communication was working.

And upon closing in on each other, Slippy fired one of his Smart Bombs to the ground right above Aruna's fighter, and Amanda hers right below it.

There was no alternative. Aruna flew right through the upper explosion, rising back into the heights above the gorge. The heat couldn't harm the Wolfen, but the shockwave coming from the explosion disabled her shield and caused the Wolfen to stagger for a brief set of two or three seconds, which were enough for the frog girl behind it to fire her last crucial shots at it's back hull. An explosion on the left rear hinted at what turned out to really have happened. One of the G-Diffusers was either damaged and inactive or completely destroyed, which somehow led to the other one spinning out of control. Smooth and flexible flight on a planet's surface was impossible now.

With a certain balance, she could make it move steadily, partially at least. But using the hyperdrive to jump away or fighting was completely out of the discussion. "Wow. I'm sorry Wolf, I have to stay out of this one. We're going to meet when our Wolfens are repaired."

All of Star Fox cheered loudly, before Wolf could answer. Deliberately, of course, since this was to severely weaken their opponents' morale.

Wolf cursed. They were already only not outnumbered because the hare was gone for some reason. But now they were either way. It was doubtful if it made much sense to stick around for a fight they would lose anyway. "Are we done here anyway?"

The flickering screen opened up as an answer. "You were done long before it started. I just wanted to see your...apprentice fight. I had low expectations and was yet disappointed. I doubt her being in good hands on your side. Nevertheless your fee is transferred. You will find it on your secondary account. Have a nice day."

All Wolf could do was growl.

Right before it, the face of ROB showed up, with him starting to say something. "A sixth A..." but it just got interrupted and forced off the main reception by Wolf's increasingly loud growling and shouting.

"Grrrr we what?", he screamed. "You made..." He sighed. "...okay that's it. Leon! Panther! We're outta here." Both of them left the fight as well. He then took on a sinister tone. One both Star Fox and his colleagues knew. He only used it, when he was really really angry. "One last thing. 'These hands' were good enough to be put against Star Fox. The Star Fox. So don't you dare talk down on them like this."

"Yes. I might have underestimated them a little bit. Guess that's because last time, they were beaten. Pretty strongly actually. As it turned out for me, it was that particular event, that completely changed their course of action."

Even after the three Wolfens ran up their engines and jumped without even leaving the atmosphere, Robert kept on talking. "Let's hope today changes it back."


	16. Outfoxing cats and spiders

Fox didn't bother to listen to the last bit. He was too distracted by an imminent thought. Did he imagine it? No, it couldn't be. On the other hand...

* * *

"Is it just me, or were there four?" Glacier asked his colleague sitting on the main chair in front of the table.

"Seemed a lot like it to me, too." So he wasn't the only one. "I'm pretty sure I saw four fighters jump, too, not just the three from Star Wolf. Also, didn't the robot try to say something just before?"

"Yes, that's ROB, yes THE ROB64, he's in charge of their carrier whenever they're not there."

"A sixth something was it, right?"

"Yes, and it obviously started with an 'a'. A sixth a...rgonaut? No, wait...A sixth aperture?"

Robert gave his friend a questioning look. "What are you talking, it didn't sound like that at all."

"Wait, could it be 'Arwing'? In terms of 'A sixth Arwing is leaving the docking bay'?"

"Would make sense."

"Does their team have six pilots? Like one as a substitute or something?"

"No, ROB definitely said 'A sixth' as in 'some and I don't know who that's supposed to be'. They must have a stowaway or something. On the other hand, repairs were made on this ship. If there was a stowaway on the Great Fox, then he definitely would have been found."

Mikhail, who was carefully keeping himself in a dead corner of his arachnophobic colleague, actually stood right beside them and was having second thoughts about his decision to let them leave with the blue vixen. He only meant it in a good way, but he nevertheless felt bad about exactly knowing what was going on, as it was his doing.

He knew the vixen was clever and would eventually find a way to wriggle herself away from them if she wanted to. He just didn't expect this to happen immediately. All he wanted was the two of them to have a chance to talk about things, about what mistakes each one of them made and how they would get things back to working the way they used to.

Things like caring other people than oneself, doing things that were in the good interest of others, all of them were things he had grown up oblivious of. He had only started to learn them a few years ago. And in the back of his mind, he still had problems dealing with them. Understanding what he was supposed to do in which situation.

He wasn't even sure he was capable of anything of the like. He only knew that keeping her jarred forever was no way to go. Not with her. If something even can be as precious to someone, it may be worth protecting, but every behaviour has it's limits. And back when he decided to let them run, he remembered something Glacier himself told him.

He didn't remember the exact words any more, but it was definitely something about thinking by oneself and not just blindly obeying orders. And he definitely said it in the context of how they all were behaving towards each other. The four of them, but also those people they regularly meet on Corneria. A kind of alliance other than for the purpose of war or business.

* * *

A quiet minute passed before Falco brought Fox back to reality. "Fox, it's over. Star Wolf is gone. What's up next?"  
"Right, right. I just thought...no, that's not possible. Next step. ROB! Put a lock on the same ship again."

"Instructions recieved and followed."

"Fox. It's done, they're on their way here." Peppy came down, keeping all power relayed to the engines to maintain a permanent boost. "They should be arriving in a few minutes."

"Great, once their communications aren't jammed any more, we can move on."

The conference window showed the flickering screen. "I'm not getting what the lock is about. Do you really think your missiles can reach us? We will just shoot them down. You'd rather just save the ammunition for a purpose that would make them more useful."

"Bear with me, they will serve their purpose."

After being silent for a few seconds, Robert responded again. "What exactly is in these missiles?"

"Explosives."

"Yeessss...of course, you're firing standard missiles at us, knowing that we shoot them down on the way. Just curious - what is really in them? Some sort of pollen? Are you trying something that way round?"

"No."

"Then what is this plan of yours?"

Falco appeared to be getting impatient. "Fox, could we please get on with it?"

"Keep it together, this is all part of it. We're waiting for the audience."

"What audience?"

"Just wait a minute." Fox opened an additional vision window fed by a rarely used camera and magnified it, while having it pointed to the sky. When he saw it, he spoke up. "They're here. Can you already hear this?"

"Loud and clear." The face of the red cappuchin showed up on the conference screen and announced their arrival. "All ships are arriving and will stop right above the surface around the Great Fox. And to answer the question, no, I repeat, no it doesn't."

"Whatever you think is going to work, it isn't. Shooting down missiles you're firing at us, won't make us an authorized target."

When the Venomian fleet arrived and still more and more were stopping mid-air, slowly forming a sphere around the Great Fox, but leaving a wide gap between the Great Fox and the distant fleet of Avalanche, Fox finally gave the order. "Fire the next missile."

The second missle was launched, and again shot down, this time by the turrets of the very ship it was targeting.

* * *

Glacier kept typing what Robert was to read. "Ok, shooting twice at us, what is all this about? If you're hoping to..." but he just let go of the key and turned around. "What's with the silly phrases? You sound like a clichéd villain from ancient films." He kept typing. "I'm not recording right now!"

"Ok, ok. But nevertheless if we want to stay here, we've got to find out what they're planning. How does Mr. McCloud possibly want to have the contracts on his side, if he keeps firing missiles at us? Could we start another test session on the system in case they ignited some sort of one-use EMP?"

"No, that would be pointless, everything was completely clear just before and they had launched two missiles back then already."

"Glacier." The deep and startling voice of Mikhail rose up behind him.

"What's wro - "He was about to turn back, but stopped half-way. "Ah almost got me there, but ok, what's wrong?"

While Robert was monitoring the other windows on the table, displaying anything from the status of all surrounding Avalanche ships, to possible battle-related data. Glacier was wondering, why Mikhail suddenly got so quiet. He used to make comments on the current situation, whenever they were on their own. Also, his voice had something different to it, something Glacier couldn't quite perceive.

"The Great Fox has put a lock on main fleet vessel 11 again." Roared Robert's voice, interrupting anything Mikhail might have started to say.  
"Again? Star Wolf shot down the first one, we shot down the second one, and we're still here. They're on to something, there must be something special. Maybe another rule I don't know about. They're provoking us to attack them, while knowing exactly that we can destroy them at will, without Venom being able to interfere.

Meanwhile, on the communication window, Falco was complaining about not understanding what Mr. McCloud was 'trying to pull off', after the fox ordered them to get their Arwings back into the Great Fox. Apparently, they weren't the only ones not understanding what this was about. Maybe, the star and fox of Star Fox just had no idea what to do and was giving random orders. Well violence wasn't going to get them that far.

After waiting for a while, Mr. McCloud came forward again. "I'm going to order to fire the next missile now. Any complaints? No? Ok. ROB, launch the third missile."

He emphasized the 'third', so it had to be something about this particular one. After shooting down the missile and the fox dealing with his confused crew, Robert gave a standard comment about the pointless effort of attacking them. And he reminded them, that Avalanche could demolish them any time and Venom would have to watch inanimately.

"I'm feeling increasingly compelled to actually destroy this cheap carrier of theirs. The Star Fox fan community would be most likely to even thank me for getting rid of a part of this darkest chapter of theirs, the Anglar Blitz."

"Glacier."

"On the other hand, then they would never get their hands on the compatibility chip and I couldn't..."

"Glacier!"

"What? Oh right forgot you're behind me." He almost did it again. Getting near Mikhail was possible for him if he struggled to resolve his paralizing fear of spiders, but turning around to see an unnaturally big one half a yard behind him was unthinkable.

"Is about fourth fighter. I might know what was about it."

This somehow sounded...foreboding. As if his exotic friend was about to tell him something he was pretty much anything but like. "Ok. What is there about it?"

"I lied, when I said they were gone in storage room."

"You did close the door?"

"Of course."

"Then what is it exactly about?" Ok, it was obvious he had let Star Fox through, but that wasn't anything worth mentioning, since Glacier would have let them go anyway. And Mikhail knew that, so it must have been something else."

"No, is about what else I saw. Fox, bird and frog were running and I caught them. And they were carrying Kursed."

For a few seconds, Glacier didn't realize what his prime bounty hunter was saying. Or rather, he didn't want to realize it. But then, he paused, took a very deep breath. Breathing in, breathing out, and then: "What?" Pretty much as loud as it ever went with his voice. He was so angry he actually turned around and turned to try to look the person behind him right into his eight eyes. And he barely even twitched.

After just looking at him in disbelief, he started moving again. "Why would you do that? Just let them run with Kursed? Our Kursed? After all we've been through with her, all the things we did and saw, after seeing how suicidal the risks she takes can get you just let her run without waiting for the right time?"  
Mikhail knew a lot of faces of this cat. He knew how he could be when he was angry. And he knew the calm look he got when his anger turned into visciousness. But this was nothing of the like. It was disappointment. And fear.

Although it was not the fear of him. It was the fear that slowly crept up Mikhails mind, too. The fear that Glacier might be right. Every time they just let Kursed act on her own will, she would get herself in a tough situation, and as she didn't wear any clothes in that tank in which they could have hidden a tracking device, every time they would see her, might as well be the last.

On the other hand, she was a fox after all. It didn't happen very often that she really got into a life-threatening situation, but as far as he knew her, the place she would head to was most likely the Lylat system, namely the land of unlimited randomness as his feline friend liked to call it, to which she, in the back of her mind, always seemed to feel attached or drawn to. Corneria. And Glacier did very well have a point. She was to land there with nothing to make use of. Without finding someone who was willing to help her, theoretically, anything might happen, but she was bound to get caught by someone who could see even a spark of her value.

But he knew how he could calm him down for the moment. Even though it was clear to him that they were to put a lot of effort into locating her afterwards. To ask around on all black markets for higher animal traders trying to sell some expensive new specimen or for some new attraction somewhere. These were at least the worst scenarios that had a good chance of happening.

Wherever she would go, a fox with naturally blue fur and a mane was sure to stick out and be recognized. Wherever she would be, they would find her. And she mostly knew what she was doing. She was careful and could look out for herself. The more important thing in the moment, was to calm Glacier down. Robert did listen, but he knew it was Mikhail's part to face him here.

"Well is time. Has been a month now and we still have no breakthrough for making fox woman reasonable." He could tell it was working from how Glacier's stance eased up a little bit.

Robert turned around from the table and padded his shoulder. "He's right, you know. You couldn't have just kept her jarred forever like some prisoner or specimen or however we call them. Calm down, we're going to find her eventually, and we'll rescue her like we always do." Glacier was still breathing heavily, but he was pulling himself together again. "I know you can be very protective about her, we all are, but you can't control her. You need to give her some freedom."

He was covering his face, but Robert could tell from the gradually decelerating breathing that it was working. "How do you think is she supposed to meet your expectations, if you don't give her any to live up to. At least try to trust her that she'll survive. She knows she can't count on us finding her instantly right now. She won't run into the first kind of trouble she will find."

It took a few minutes for him to digest all of this, but eventually, he caught himself. "All right. Guess we'll have to finish what we're doing here first."

"Is right, but remember is Star Fox we are dealing with. You like Star Fox, don't you."

"Yes, I can't just have you torture them to death, but at least we can make something clear. Stealing people, firing at us, we have to make sure people know we never forget."

Robert knew it was up to him to take over things for the moment. "Yep, correct. When we were inside the Great Fox, it was apparent the bridge was in the lower center, so if we launch missiles to hit the left and right sides around it..."

"Carrier would break apart but crew stay unharmed."

"Ok, but let's play this safe." He pressed down the key for recording and spoke. "Say, Star Fox, are all of you in the bridge?"

They answered positively, with the screen showing all of them in the bridge. He dialed someone on his comm. : "Ice front? How's the swap going? Perfect!" He turned it off again. "Good news, the footage has been completed and swapped in their ships' database."

Glacier called Aruna in the mean time. "Did you land inside?"

"Yes, I'm prepared to leave if it's that."

"Now then, everything is done, we can leave any time, or rather risk having to leave in this case."

During their talk before, the Great Fox had already fired the third missile and it had been shot down, without further consequences. And the three of them were convinced to show them, they had better not. "Let's do this."

* * *

"All right, this is it. You were warned several times and kept firing at us. And here is our answer.", the hidden face of Avalanche announced, before from several of the distant ships, only visible through windows with zoomed views of the white fleet, white spiky rockets came forth. Their menacingly looking shapes already gave the team a very bad feeling of what was about to happen as they slowly moved forward, twisting around, until they reached a direct collision course with the Great Fox and accelerated rapidly.

"We don't have any turrets! They're gonna hit us! We're all going to die!" Slippy screamed, concealing his head with his hands, or at least trying to and hiding below the table that held the wide panels on which ten red lights moved towards the symbol of the Great Fox, with a red light surrounding the main panel flashing. The alarm sirens went off, as Slippy whimpered in his hiding.

His reaction was the extreme, but everyone was scared and bracing for impact. Everyone was getting a hold somewhere. Peppy on the controls, Amanda first moved into a corner and tried using two walls as support, but then decided to crawl to Slippy, who was still under the table and started holding his wife once she arrived and Falco got a strong grip on Fox' collar. "You moron got us all killed.", he screamed at him with all his lungs had to offer.

They all either looked away or kept their eyes shut. They felt slight trembles and heard shots loud explosions in the not too far distance, but nothing happened. When they opened their eyes and turned to the walls, depicting the surroundings of the Great Fox, everything was the way it was before, except for a few small curtains of smoke hanging in the air right before them.

The Venomian fleet, which had only been waiting around the Great Fox and watching the spectacle beforehand, had shot down all of the missiles headed for this one small carrier. Fox was happy to see such a well-aimed and thorough barrage again once in a while.  
The voice behind the flickering screen stopped short. "Did what I think happened, really happen?"

The moment of truth had passed and all had gone according to Fox' plan. The red capuchin showed up once again with a mix between his usual disciplined straight stare and a very wide smile. "The Great Fox' third missle was the last one in their arsenal. This model has no weapon systems, except for the missile launchers. And even of missiles, it can only hold three. As all fighters are in the docking bay right now and they had fired their last missile before, team Star Fox had no means of defending themselves against your attack. Nevertheless, you tried to cover them in a salve of explosives, that would rip their vessel apart."

"By article 24 of the Exterior Prosecution Treaty I, Admiral Darrick Smith of the Venomian Delta fleet, declare the locally resident Avalanche fleet an authorized target and will gain the right to fire at will and raze your fleet unless you retreat at least to the outside of this system within five minutes until we leave or in seven Venomian days from now."

After hearing this, Robert took a short pause, before responding. The first thing they heard was clapping. The clapping of three pairs of hands. One of them sounded different. "Well played. Very well played. All right. You know what this means. Star Fox, your fee for the escortation has been transferred to your public account in the Bank of Corneria City. Good bye, Star Fox. I know our encounter has ended rather harsh, but I hope we will meet under better conditions another time." He paused. "General Hare."

"Yes?"

"Do not forget what I told you about myself. It will make my general position towards all of you very clear. Good day." These were the last words Robert, obviously speaking for Glacier and Mikhail too, departed with, before the octagonal colossus and those huge white ships around it slowly accelerated and moved away from the surface to the orbit. Most certainly to open a gate to outside of the System.

Even from the distance, he could hear the Blizzard's engine roaring, as it ascended into the all blue sky. With the sheer force the mere appearance it expressed if along with all the other white ships around it, it really must have sent cold shivers down the spines of many people, fearing a white storm of power closing in on them. Even if it was most likely to fit the name of the enterprise, Blizzard was a very well chosen name.

When the last of the white giants left even the necessary range to see them with zoomed vision, Fox was embraced with a long-missed feeling of satisfaction. Finally, once again he accomplished something great. He drove back an entire fleet of ships, each one so large and accordingly well armed, even the smallest one was big enough for the Great Fox II to fit into several times. And this one small ship was all he needed to achieve it.

"Well done, Star Fox. If would be so kind, I would like you to come to my flag ship to have me thank you for this personally."

All of the team slowly realized what had been happening right before their eyes and slowly turned to Fox. To their leader, who had returned to be the shining idol they remembered him as. Falco's hands eased their grip and he took a step back. "Wow. Just wow. How did...the letter."

So Falco understood it. "Yeah, the letter contained not just a briefing on our situation and our intention, but also clear instructions to arrange their ships in a way that allows them to easily shoot down or block any projectile at will. If they were to charge large-scale laser cannons and aim these at us, they were definitely to also hit a Venomian ship behind us. And destroying whole national vessels was sure to come with a lot more trouble than just having to leave the planet, and even that wasn't their intention. So it was clear that if they were to open fire, then with missiles. And these could be shot down with laser fire from the Venomian fleet. They were protecting us in several ways."

The Toads who both had moved back to the side of the bridge they usualy stood in, were tumbling in confusion. This was getting too much for them.  
"But it also featured a question. One of the rules Glacier had listed in our first briefing today stated that firing at an unarmed party makes you an authorized target. This old thing is a very old model, every ship nowadays has several dozens of smaller projectiles with equal firepower, you mostly don't need to waste any thoughts on ammunition in shorter battles, so it's unusual to have as little ammunition to it's only weapon system as this one. So the obvious question was: Does an entity with a weapon, but without ammunition to use it with, count as an armed entity? Yes or no?"

Peppy nodded in instantaneous comprehension. "Impressive. But this was a precarious situation, so why take the risk and phrase it that way? Why not make it 'does it count as an unarmed party'?"

"To confuse Glacier. Since Smith said 'no it doesn't', Glacier thought I asked if some idea or plan would work."

"Hm, outfoxing them with negated communication. Sounds like ya, Fox. Way to go! Victory five!" And waited for Fox to open his palm to give him one of his rare full-strength high fives.

After a short cheer from everyone, Fox faced the screen again and had their channel opened for communication. "Admiral Smith. We would be honored."

* * *

**With this, the first arc is finally done. To understand it's role: If the entire storyline were a videogame, everything up to this point would be the tutorial. It basically hints or mentions all aspects of the main plot. By the way I've thrown away all the ideas I had for the first filler arc (second arc), as I considered them awful or unfitting. If you like, feel free to give ideas. It can even be single words, as long as they come from someone else than me, they might spark something. **

**Main thing about the first filler arc is that it's going to feature another team of mercenaries. The team is OC, but it's members aren't and they're the big star in the Lylat system. I just couldn't think of a context that would fit. I would like to thank those who read and reviewed up until now. You're not many, but you did show me it's readable. **


	17. Fortunate Coincidences

_After a very wrong writer's block, i finally got back to continuing this. I want to thank and apologize to those who stopped by to check if this was going on for so long. I'm really sorry I let you down. Now, I finally have a clear picture of how things are to go for the following arcs._

* * *

On the shelf of the wide screen at the side of the table, which was supposed to look like a window, were candles. There were real lights, but they were very dim. All of the team patiently sat, and watched attentively, as the waiter slowly came along with a large plate with hors d'oeuvres. As he calmly guided himself towards the ta...

"Hurry up over there!", Falco bawled out.

No-one was particularly fond of his manners, but they all tried to ignore it, as Fox rested his forearms on the table and addressed the entering Admiral.

"Hey there, Admiral."

"First of all, welcome to the 3812 Ferry. Now if I may take a seat. What you did on the surface helped us save a lot of time for work in other places. If something comes up and you were to need a favor we could do..."

Fox interrupted him. "Such as pay us, maybe?"

Smith didn't know what to answer for a second. "I beg your pardon?"

"We overtook or shortened your work, along with risking our lives and turning on an employer. I'd believe a compensation seems appropriate."

Smith stopped short. He offers them a favor and they just ask for money? Without an assignment or a contract or anything? This was an outrage. "You can't be serious. I don't remember hiring you, and so didn't my predecessor."

Fox didn't just let him sweep that off like that. He bent a bit over the table and pointed at the shocked monkey. "We helped you unasked, when you were in a helpless situation. If we don't receive a fee for this , we'll think twice about crossing our employers, next time." He got him with that. He knew nothing would change this. As far as he remembered, Dash Bowman was always very fond of the Star Fox team. The least thing the Venomians would want to do, was to assure not to receive help from them if they wanted.

Smith hung loose and sighed. "Right - but under one condition. We have an assignment for you. And for what you did today, you will only receive a payment, if you accept the next one."

Made additional money from before and landed yet another job at the same time. It couldn't get any better. Fox didn't even bother asking further questions. He relaxed, movedaround the table up to Admiral Smith to shake his hand and accept the offer, without even bothering to listen to any word coming from Falco.

A female monotonous voice coming from the loud speakers suddenly announced: "Incoming transmission. Security Level superior - connecting now."  
Yet another Venomian showed up on the wide screen at the side of the table. His uniform bore even more medals and badges than that of Green.

"Delta Fleet - this is High Command. I hear the individuals that cleared up your situation are on your flag ship."

Upon salutation, Smith confirmed said statement. "Affirmative. This is the Star Fox team."

"How relieving. Our emperor will be most overjoyed to hear it was them. We would be pleased to call in some more private assistance at the Hope, Faith and Charity Research Facility on Aquas."

"I already recruited them for it. They agreed. I shall brief them on it, within the hour. At least about what we know." Said action was approved of by Smith's apparent superior and they saw each other off.

The video conference closed, after Smith had put on the glove to control it remotely and opened up a Googol Aquas application, zooming on a certain location on the southeastern coast of the planet's amphibian territory. That particular location stirred up a comment from Slippy.

"Woah! That's exactly where the Somer Square was, just twenty years ago."

And Smith confirmed that. "Exactly. This is the position where you will be contacted and sent the information needed to find a nearby research facility. It isn't even featured on public maps, yet. For legal reasons. But the reason is, it was just recently built. It got it's name from a sunken ship, that was just recently discovered while the founding structures were set in place. The Hope, Faith and Charity."

Hope, Faith and Charity. Peppy had heard about it. And about it's disappearing. It had been on the way to attend a, back in the day, classified meeting on the Aquan surface. The private carrier of the Ikrelian ambassador Michaelo Inquistelli.

"The lab guys have taken that place up to use it for their augmentations on biologic accelerators. Ones that work on land, for agricultural purposes, naturally. Thing is, our intel gave us undeniable evidence that the Corvaccio have an interest for it, and that they will infiltrate the facility or attack it."  
He opened a photo of a group of different crows in a variety of grey suits and everyone wearing a fedora on their heads, some of them even trying to hide their faces in the shadows of their hats. "We don't know what for, but they want to do it, once the next prototype of Dr. Phillip Carlton." He opened a picture of a lemur in a lab coat placing a plant in front of some laser-related device.

The Corvaccio were a very conservative network that worked in all sorts of organized crime. They had their strings not only in Scirillia though. They ranged all the way throughout the connected systems. Even all the way to Lylat. Rumors always had been around about them also having a huge political influence upon all systems of the Ikrelian domain and that they even would have maintained personal contact to Silvestro Bertolino himself over decades.

Peppy couldn't shake a thought. The coincidence was too apparent. He piped up to utter it: "Tell me, how are you so sure the attack is related to the accelerator and not the Hope, Faith and Charity? The sunken wreck of an Ikrelian ambassador and the network of Scirillian organized crime at one place? How doesn't that sound more related?"

It didn't impress the monkey at all though. He just wove it off and commented: "The report puts a very strong emphasis on a quote reading...wait..." He searched around in some folders and opened a document, apparently recalling events from someone attending a meeting undercover. "Here we are."

He pointed at a certain passage, marked it and read it aloud. "Don C. made it unmistakably clear, that the infiltration must be carried out precisely when the P0375-D non-marine biological accelerator is declared complete and ready for large-scale testing by research department leader Carlton. Anything too early and too late severely compromises the chances of success. And is hence neither advisable, nor acceptable."

So it appeared Peppy's thought was not as well founded as he thought, after all. He decided to keep the possibility in mind, anyway. On the other hand, if the wreck was discovered while the facility was built, they might have attacked any time. Why then? Why wait for it? He had to spend more time thinking about this when he had the chance to recollect himself.

"Back to where I was. In exactly twelve hours, if testing goes according to plan, this will happen. We already hired the latest stellar favourite for the job, but I think we can always do with some independent extra security."

"Latest favourite?", Slippy blurted out.

* * *

Glacier finally had put all the stuff from his Cornerian apartment into place. Or to be frank, he just took all the bags and hung them up the hooks in his preparation room and had taken out his note block and the most important data carriers.

Next thing he did was get back on his desk and spend his time in front of his table. Checked up on the most important things that were going on, such as the buy-out of the Gromian water rights, the newest intel on what these 'Elevated Labour United' guys were going after, keeping an eye on how things went on Sketh, and then the things he considered more important afterwards: What Star Fox were up to and what happened to Kursed.

Kursed hadn't been found as of yet, but from his sources in the Venomian Delta fleet he received their next assignment. And the coincidence it was involved in was to be considered very, very fortunate. He was to keep that in mind, as in about nine or ten hours time, he had to take another picture of a note. Depending on their reaction, he was likely to get to watch everything directly.

One of the things that had Star Fox collide with perfectly, was that one of his friends and hence one of his most reliable contacts, Ronald Graves, had sent him a message just beforehand, that the Corvaccio, namely a Mr. Tedesco, had recruited him for a very precarious job on the very same research facility. Most likely exactly the kind of infiltration Star Fox was hired to prevent. He had answered him immediately at the time, telling him to only stick with the job for as long as it was safe. As safe as it goes if you're violently intruding in a research facility on the water, likely surrounded by heavy artillery on the outside and guarded by dozens of imperial soldiers and two famous teams of mercenaries, that was of course.

He was about to go to bed, since he hadn't slept for a very, very long time and needed at least these seven or eight hours of sleep, when suddenly one of his contact platforms rang out a call. It was Tom O'Pharrell. "Oi, Gleeshur! What are you doing with your time tomorrow?"

"Eh, yes. Uhm I guess you were calling because...?"

"Just wanted to ask ye if you had time to come around and RP for a bit tomorrow noon. You know before the get together in two days. We're all gonna meet again then, but gaming's only tomorrow."

Why did they always plan these on such a short note? He knows exactly that Glacier doesn't like surprises and spontaneous plans like that. He can't adapt to them so quickly. Not if he isn't prepared for spontaneous stuff, and most of all people he entrusts his friends with having his back in terms of that. And they all know exactly he enjoys their sessions most. Maybe not quite as much as Sandy does. But otherwise...

"I'm sorry. I have something very important to attend to. Most likely at least."

"What is it then?"

"Ron got hired for a mission on Aquas. And I might have the chance of seeing everything live. And now listen: There's going to be Star Fox, and the Lylatgirls."

Thomas paused. "Ah, so you're gonna keep an eye on - her - again, aren't you?"

He didn't like the way this was going. He didn't like it at all. He hissed into the phone. "Stop trying to associate me with that lynx woman!"

"You've got to put down that attitude, lad."

"Okay, okay. Now listen. This is not going to happen. She is the personification of what I don't like about most people. More than that. She's it's crystalline essence! She sells herself to the public, showing not the faintest bit of self-regard. But at the same time thinks she wouldn't just be worth something, she even believes she would be something important or valuable!"

"If there's nothing about all this, what's the story she keeps telling then?"

"Listen. If I would rescue someone from a dark complex of tunnels filled with people infected with some large, viral parasite and magically warp her several hours back in time and drop her off at the Ontarian Falls at daybreak...don't you consider that kind of story something memorable? Something that I might...just might...remember if it happened to me?"

No response. "And I've even bothered watching an entire episode of that tv show of theirs. And the result was obvious: It's awful. They put in the laugh track, you know what it's about, but it's not funny at all. The music they make? I hate pop music unless it's for some video game's soundtrack or a Kenjan cartoon's opening."

"All right. Listen. If you happen to have the time after all, just pop by with your character sheets and everything."

"Will do, if possible. I'm really sorry I can't, but next time, please tell me earlier. I have to manage things in a way that allows me to not attend them in a certain time window, and I can't do that instantly, just like that."

"Yah, sorry 'bout that. Livia just found out she has a day off tomorrow, that's why. Okay, see ya then."

"Will be seeing you."

He immediately turned everything off after the call ended to go to sleep. He didn't mention Kursed, but he didn't for a reason. Well, one of them was of course that it would cause a similar reaction as the one there was to mentioning the Lylatgirls. But the other was to increase the chances of quickly getting her back. What ever happened on the Great Fox, she was doubtlessly going to be confused about what's going on. And if she was to run into them and they reacted naturally, there were better chances to talking to her, than if they tried to catch her or something. But he had to get his mind back to what was going to be important next.

* * *

They all didn't do much on their way back. They all just wanted to be rested for the assignment that might be crucial to the likeliness of them being hired by the empire again, rather than these 'Lylatgirls's the admiral mentioned. When the alarm clock of the Toads rang, Slippy and Amanda slowly got up, closed the door behind them, and quietly proceeded to first grab themselves some smoked rhinoceros beetle and then enter the bridge. Where they saw a message had arrived.

A picture, taken from some screen-table like thing, even with a screensaver in the background, seemingly showing a drawing of a set of people he hasn't seen before. In the center, nevertheless, lay a torn piece of paper with something written on it. "General Hare's room, Shelf on left side, big red book cover in top left compartment, behind it." That was it. Nothing else.

"What do you think it is?"

But Slippy didn't know in the first second either. But when looking at it more closely...one of the people on the wallpaper in the background looked an awful lot like Mikhail. Actually, with the same clothes, the weapons on all legs, it was him. And the one in the center just barely not covered by the note, was Glacier Tagore. The real one. "Do you remember what Fox said when we got the message that contained that address that led us to the cat in the first place?"

"There were just two pictures. With stuff written on them. You think this is...?"

"Exactly the same. So if we go after this, it'll lead us to something. Didn't you say there were people messing around in the Great Fox, when we were gone?" He let go of the panels and left for the personnel deck, taking Amanda's hand and dragging her with him.

"Yes, but they were just routine repairs..."

As if. "...they restocked the fridge and got the heating in our second bathroom to work again. I'm not sure if these were just routine repairs they made." More than enough time to rest had passed. No time to wait for Peppy to finish oversleeping.

The door slid open, possibly stirring up Peppy, but it was about time to get going soon, anyway. Slippy turned on the light, giving Peppy a casual greeting, which was followed by a more polite one from his dear wife. He got what he bargained for with his wife at punching him in the side. But he'd rather not pay too much attention to that and proceeded to said shelf.

Indeed, the top left part only had one book with a red cover: 'History of the Kenjou - Sites and events'; He put it on the bedside table, and behind where it was he found a small white memory unit with an extendable port, it's slide on one side, and the logo of Avalanche, the blue 'A' with the three snow flakes, on the other side.

"What do you think this is?"

"What are you two goin' on about?" Peppy rubbed his eyes, heard a softly spoken apology from Amanda, but before he could really open them, both frogs were gone again.

Slippy's mind didn't have much room for consideration at that point. When he found something intriguing, he would always be fixed on it, until he understood what there was about it. And this was just getting more and more exciting with everything that happened. He returned to the bridge, slid the memory unit's port into the main console, and all it did was run an automatic application displaying a transparent window with 'This memory unit is for wrist comms and work pads only. Please retrieve from current terminal."

He could have looked into it and tried to unlock what it was after. But something about that didn't seem sensible. If it had been something malicious, it would have accessed the main console already. But if that had been it's purpose, why ask the user to take it out again and plug it into a comm instead? Information on all data sources of a ship was more valuable and crucial after all.

He did try to look into it's content, but it was locked with security measures way beyond a level he could personally bypass. Despite anything he could come up with in the first moment. Such supremacy. There was only one program he knew that was as advanced as this. The SEB's isolation software. And trying that was pointless. If whoever that was, wanted it locked, he wouldn't hand around software that unlocks it.

He had tried out everything he came up with. He even did go for trying to use the SEB's isolation software against his or her own security. He was really considering inserting the memory unit into his own comm. Amanda was giving him second thoughts, asking him if he didn't want to consult the others about it, first. But where was the fun in that? Her argument was invalid.

Before he proceeded, he transferred and deleted all important data from his comm to the main console and cleared out all sorts of history including keywords on his comm. "All right, let's go for it."

"Slippy..."

"Upon connecting it to his comm, it once again started an automatic application. This time a different one. He wanted to draw it out again, since it seemed to install something, but it was finished within seconds. Taking it out would have had no effect. Instead it opened a colorful window containing some sort of communication program with instant messenging, a window for a picture or footage feed, a secondary smaller one and various other functions, all of them extendable, so that you could clearly see what ever you were supposed to look at. But with only one contact and no option to add any: 'Annie Randonam'.

After a few seconds a message popped up in the chat window.

[Hello. Could you please retreat into a closed off room without too many unnecessary additional viewers?]

[Something with a blank wall, so there can't be any unnecessary cameras.]

Afraid of too many people listening? Slippy knew that from somewhere. It seemed pretty apparent who it really was.

[Sure, just wait up for a sec.]

Before moving on, he added: [Can I bring Amanda along?]

[Of course.]

So he headed off for one of their guest rooms. Slid the door open, led Amanda through and then closed it again. They sat on the bed and leaned against the wall, before trying to answer. But there was no need to. The secondary visual part already extended to display a familiar face.

"Hello, Toads. I already thought it would be you, who would go through with installing my contact client. I may call you by your first names, may I?"

"Sure. So what are we..."

Amanda broke off what ever Slippy was about to say: "Before we talk, aren't you mad at us for driving you off that rural world?"

"Well, I should, actually. I mean without any further ado, I trusted you, even with my life, and the first chance you get, you double-cross me. And you took a woman with you, who is of very - very big importance to me. My survival and that of a lot of other people might depend on her if things go as expected. Which involves all of the Lylat system, too. And you just put her life at risk by freeing her." He paused and raised his finger. "But - but, two things are partially getting you out of this. Firstly: You're Star Fox. The Star Fox. Secondly, she wasn't harmed. At least not enough to not escape by herself.

And instead of declaring some sort of war on you, I decided to keep trying to establish more contact with you. So - is there anything you would like to ask me in the aftermath? This right now might be the only chance you have talking with me face-to-face for a longer time."

* * *

Yes, Bertolino has been in office for decades. He keeps himself alive by a share of stem-cell-based clones to regularly regrow and replace all parts of his body.

Googol isn't just a silly respelling but the word, the name of the company and the search engine actually derived from.

The hints started about something that hasn't happened to someone yet, but has to someone else. This is part of a crossover aspect taking place in the same universe, but the crossover is actually a separate story, which is why this fiction stays in the normal game fanfiction archive.

This story has 3600 words without the notes.

Feel free to review after reading.


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